Greece Gaining Ground Globally in Innovation

Hellenic Parliament, Athens

Greece ranked 30th on a list of 60 of the world’s most innovative countries, according to the recently released “Bloomberg Innovation Index 2021”.

The annual index ranks the world’s 60 most innovative countries using seven criteria, including research & development expenditure as a percentage of GDP, productivity, patent activity, concentration of researchers, concentration of high-tech companies, and tertiary education efficiency.

Greece scored 68.47 on a scale of 100 based on its performance in the seven sub-sectors related to innovation.

The country’s highest score (48 points) was recorded in “manufacturing value-added”, followed by “patent activity” (47 points), “innovation productivity” (43 points), and “research & development intensity” (34 points).

According to the index, Greece garnered 29 points for high-tech density (concentration of locally based high-tech companies) and 26 points for research concentration. 

The country’s lowest performance (9 points) was in “tertiary efficiency”, which concerns total enrolment in education as a percentage of post-secondary groupings and the share of the labor force with an advanced level of education.

Overall, South Korea is the world’s leading innovative country in 2021 according to the Bloomberg Innovation Index with a sore of 90.49, pushing Germany out of first place (2020) to 4th spot this year. Singapore ranked 2nd and Switzerland 3rd.

At the same time, seven European states are among the top 10 most innovative countries in the world: Germany 4th, Sweden 5th, Denmark 6th, Finland 8th, the Netherlands 9th, and Austria 10th.

The 2021 Bloomberg innovation rankings “reflect a world where the fight against Covid-19 has brought innovation to the fore – from government efforts to contain the pandemic, to the digital infrastructure that’s allowed economies to work through it, and the race to develop vaccines that can end it,” said Bloomberg.