The WIIH 2026 was prepared under the general direction of Daren Tang (Director General) in WIPO’s IP and Innovation Ecosystems Sector led by Marco Alemán (Assistant Director General) and, more specifically, in the Department of Economics and Data Analytics led by Carsten Fink (Chief Economist). It was managed and drafted by Anmol Kaur Grewal (Fellow) and Sacha Wunsch-Vincent (Head, Section) and in collaboration with the LBS team, led by Cecilia Jona-Lasinio (Full Professor, LBS) with contributions from Filippo Bontadini, Zoe Brunoro, Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Massimiliano Iommi, Florencia Jaccoud, Giuliana Pizzolo, John Lourenze Poquiz, Perla Rivadeneyra and Patrick Serberis – all part of the Global INTAN-Invest team. Roger Zamora Matute and Jeffrey Slee (both WIPO) significantly contributed to the new WIPO-LBS Intangible Economy Profiles to be published later in 2026. The feedback of the Technical Advisory Board and the Steering Committee, as well as the participants of the 2026 Global INTAN-Invest Conference in Rome in May 2026, is thankfully acknowledged.
This report will be complemented by a broader effort by the same author team to document the role of intangible assets in the global economy, set out in full in Corrado, C., C. Fink, A.K. Grewal, J. Haskel, C. Jona-Lasinio and S. Wunsch-Vincent (eds) (forthcoming). Living in an Immaterial World: How Intangible Assets Drive the Global Economy. London: CEPR Press.
The WIPO-LBS Partnership benefits from the guidance of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the World Bank as Steering Committee members.