The United States has dropped out of the top five most-innovative economies of the world, according to the Global Innovation Index 2018 (GII).
The GII ranking is published annually by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which is the UN intellectual property agency.
The GII ranks 126 economies based on 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications.
Although the United States dropped down to sixth from fourth last year, the report describes the country as "an innovation powerhouse that has produced many of the world's leading hi-tech firms and life-changing innovations".
The authors of the Index highlights China's rise to No. 17 from last year's 22nd position. "The higher ranking this year represents a breakthrough for an economy witnessing rapid transformation guided by government policy prioritizing research and development-intensive ingenuity," they said.
Switzerland retained its number-one spot in the Global Innovation Index. The next rankings in the top ten are the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore, United States, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.
A group of middle and lower-income economies perform significantly better on innovation than their level of development would predict, GII shows.
"Aside from China, the middle-income economy closest to the top 25 group is Malaysia, said Soumitra Dutta, Former Dean and Professor of Management at Cornell University. "Other interesting cases are India, Iran, Mexico, Thailand and Viet Nam which consistently climb in the rankings," she noted.
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