GENEVA - Japan remained in 12th place in an annual innovation report by the World Intellectual Property Organization this year, trailing South Korea, Singapore and China among major regional economies.
The result leaves Japan well short of the government's goal of raising the country's standing to fourth or higher in the Global Innovation Index by 2035 under its intellectual property strategy for 2025.
South Korea placed fourth, the highest in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by Singapore in fifth, with China ranked 10th. The positions of South Korea, Japan and China remained unchanged from last year.
The index used some 80 indicators in evaluating 139 economies on their innovation performance. It placed Switzerland at the top for the 16th straight year, followed by Sweden and the United States.
The report cited Japan's strength in industrial and corporate innovation as among the strongest in the world. It said the Tokyo-Yokohama region's position as the world's second-ranked innovation cluster reflects "the global weight of Japan's patenting, research and venture capital activity."
The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou region in China retained the top spot in the top innovation clusters ranking.
However, Japan lagged in areas including tertiary education, science and engineering graduates, and knowledge-intensive employment, while a declining youth population weighed on its innovation performance, the report said.
"Japan has one of the most consistent innovation systems in the world," said Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, co-editor of the report. "The depth of Japanese companies-led research, together with close ties to universities and public institutes, keeps Japan among the top innovation economies year after year."
The report also pointed to continued growth in global investment in technological innovation. It estimated that global research and development expenditure grew 3.3 percent in 2025 from a year earlier in real terms and projected it to expand 3.6 percent in 2026 to $3.4 trillion.
Venture capital grew around 28 percent in value to $510 billion in 2025, with artificial intelligence accounting for 53 percent of global deal value, according to the report.
