Innovation Capabilities
Innovation ecosystems are like bands: they start with a few key players, each bringing their own specialized skills. The most sophisticated ecosystems evolve into symphonic orchestras, where a diverse set of highly specialized players work in harmony to create complex outputs that only a few can replicate.
Up-and-coming ecosystems are still in the process of finding their style. Strategically picking which instruments to add can help them, little by little, play this beautiful music too.
The technological advancements achieved during the last few decades, including breakthroughs in communication and digital infrastructure, have simplified the global exchange of ideas and technologies. Despite this, why do innovation ecosystems differ so much in their income levels? The answer lies in their innovation capabilities—the ability of an ecosystem to deliver competitive outputs in a field of the innovation process.
Innovation capabilities rely on the ability to absorb, apply, and adapt knowledge. These skills, expertise, and insights are often deeply embedded within the workforce and culture of a region, making them difficult to replicate elsewhere. These factors shape how innovation ecosystems evolve and respond to new opportunities, giving some regions a distinct advantage in certain fields.
Featured
Innovation Capabilities Navigator
Select an economy and access its capabilities across science, technology, entrepreneurship, and production.
Innovation Capabilities Outlook 2026
This inaugural edition presents a groundbreaking analytical methodology to comprehensively map global capability networks and systematically examine strategic diversification pathways for worldwide innovation ecosystems.
Innovation capabilities insights
Find out more through our innovation capabilities insights.
How can innovation capabilities help policymaking?
Measuring and understanding these innovation capabilities can allow policymakers to identify and support the unique potential within their ecosystems.
Measuring and understanding innovation capabilities gives policymakers a powerful tool to identify the unique strengths and gaps within their ecosystems. When governments can see exactly where their economy holds competitive advantages across science, technology, entrepreneurship, and production, they can direct limited resources toward the areas where action will have the greatest impact.
Capabilities also reveal systemic imbalances that would otherwise go undetected. Some economies excel at producing internationally recognized scientific research but struggle to translate discoveries into commercial applications. Others contribute significantly to global production yet fail to develop the technological learning that drives long-term growth. Identifying these mismatches allows governments to design policies that clear specific bottlenecks and build more integrated innovation ecosystems.
For policymakers seeking to explore their economy's full innovation profile, the Innovation Capabilities Navigator offers an interactive way to assess current capabilities, identify emerging opportunities, and understand strategic pathways for growth across 2,508 fields and four dimensions of innovation activity.
Innovation Capabilities Navigator
Explore your economy's innovation profile across science, technology, entrepreneurship, and production. The Navigator maps current capabilities, accessible opportunities, and strategic pathways to help policymakers make more informed decisions about where to focus their efforts.
IMAGE: Getty Images/anyaberkut
Unfolding the capability path
Examining the evolution of the ecosystem’s capabilities can help identify if the path to development is on the right track.
IMAGE: Getty Images/anilakkus
Assess current capabilities
Ecosystems can understand which of their capabilities are the most precious and look into ways of nurturing them.
IMAGE: Getty Images/vgajic
Find new opportunities
Prioritize where to look for new, promising innovation capabilities that unlock their unique potential.
Tracking innovation capabilities worldwide
The Innovation Capabilities Outlook represents WIPO's commitment to understanding how the global innovation ecosystem evolves each year.
Each edition reveals which economies are expanding their repertoire, mastering new sophisticated capabilities, or struggling to keep pace with global trends. The Outlook tracks not just individual performance, but the broader patterns reshaping the global innovation landscape—from the rise of Asian innovation powerhouses to the systematic barriers preventing many economies from realizing their potential.
This annual intelligence enables policymakers, business leaders, and researchers to spot emerging opportunities, benchmark their progress against global trends, and adapt their strategies as innovation networks evolve. The analysis draws on billions of data points to map over 2,500 innovation capabilities, revealing the hidden connections that determine which economies thrive in the knowledge economy.
For researchers and analysts seeking to dive deeper, the Innovation Capabilities Datasets are available through the WIPO Knowledge Repository, enabling custom analysis and research applications. The Innovation Capabilities Outlook Technical Notes are also available through the Repository, providing documentation of the methodology used to track and measure innovation capabilities
Learn more about how the project can help you unlock the potential of your innovation ecosystem.
Innovation Capabilities Outlook
The Innovation Capabilities Outlook captures the dynamic shifts in how economies build, connect, and leverage their innovation capabilities across science, technology, entrepreneurship, and production.
Why map innovation capabilities?
Recently, there has been a resurgence of industrial policies at a global level. In this new wave, governments are increasingly making critical decisions in the fields of science, technology, and innovation policy, which affect resource allocation decisions by various public and private actors within different innovation ecosystems.
There is growing consensus that decisions should not be made in isolation and through centralized ("top-down") approaches, but rather by considering the local capabilities and needs of innovation ecosystems. Instead of replicating successful industries from other regions, approaches like smart specialization emphasize the need for policies grounded in local diagnostics and knowledge, leveraging each region's existing skills and, above all, addressing its specific challenges.
Bottom-up approaches that use data to measure capabilities can inform policies that are aligned with local realities, fostering a more inclusive and effective innovation ecosystem.
Innovation Complexity Navigator
The tool leverages complexity and relatedness indicators to help ecosystems assess their innovation capabilities.
IMAGE: Roman Barkov/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Measuring Innovation Complexity—and Why It Matters
Different countries, different capabilities—but one clear trend: complexity and prosperity move together
Where to find resources?
Explore essential resources that drive research in innovation capabilities.
IMAGE: Getty Images/Fernando Rincon
Literature
Curated list of publications and reports that provide evidence that supports data driven innovation policymaking.
IMAGE: Getty Images/Isara Methong
Datasets
Access innovation capability indicators and apply them to your research.
IMAGE: Getty Images/lucadp
Codes
Implement, refine and expand innovation capability methodologies through open-source code.
IMAGE: Getty Images/peppo
Visualizations
Browse through a selection of interactive visualizations and discover insights.