Benchmarking innovation with Orbis data

A new report published by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) highlights the impact of Covid-19 on innovation, and on traditional financing mechanisms to foster it such as loans and venture capital.

Using Bureau van Dijk’s powerful entity data tool Orbis, WIPO aimed to uncover trends that will help address the challenges facing innovators, namely the “mobilization of stable and accessible financing mechanisms”.

The report’s findings are optimistic, demonstrating areas of development and potential recovery. As conventional finance sources decline in the current economic climate, new forms of financing innovation are surfacing, including crowdfunding, microfinancing and sovereign wealth funds.

WIPO’s assessment of the shifting global innovation landscape has identified China, Vietnam, India and the Philippines as continuing their trajectory towards building innovative economies.

Metrics gathered on regional high-tech production suggest there are encouraging pockets of innovation in developing economies. Mozambique, for instance, leads sub-Saharan Africa in global investment.

WIPO’s report considers two critical questions: how does the disparity between countries in terms of financing affect what it terms “the global innovation divide”, and how can we foster novel and potential financing mechanisms that are inclusive of developing economies? Its Global Innovation Index ranks the innovation performance of nearly 130 economies around the world. The top 20 countries are led by Switzerland, Sweden and the US:

Source: WIPO Global Innovation Index 2020

Bureau van Dijk’s unique global entity database Orbis allows WIPO to amass granular, diverse data in a standardized format for the development of the Global Innovation Index. Find out more about how Bureau van Dijk’s tools facilitate this form of complex entity data analysis.

You can also read the full report on the index, published by INSEAD, Cornell University and WIPO.