Switzerland is the world's most innovative country for a second consecutive year while Asian giant India made the biggest strides among major economies, a global indicator showed Wednesday.
The annual Global Innovation Index -- compiled by World Intellectual Property Organisation, Cornell University and INSEAD -- ranks 129 world economies on 80 parameters including research, technology and creativity.
Switzerland was closely followed by Sweden and the United States, with Israel rounding out the top 10.
The Grand Duchy, however, was one of several top 25 countries to see its position slip - Luxembourg was ranked 15th in the 2018 edition, but ranked 18th in the latest edition. The Grand Duchy fell alongside Australia and New Zealand.
According to the GII's country ranking, Luxembourg's main strengths - especially relative to the other top 25-ranked GII economies - are its political and operational stability, its tertiary inbound mobility, ICT access, knowledge-intensive employment, intellectual property payments, and its online creativity. In these areas, Luxembourg ranked either first or second and more globally had high scores in the 'creative outputs' category, which also includes a high ranking for the country's cultural and creative services exports.
Of the seven categories examined, namely institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs, the GII revealed weaknesses in six of the categories, although all seven categories had weaknesses compared to the top 25-ranked economies.
Amongst other areas, Luxembourg scored badly in terms of its electricity output (kWh/minimum population), its ease of getting credit, and the ease of protecting minority investors.
