Ranking the World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters

The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2025 Ranking of the World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters has been released, offering insights into where innovation is concentrated and how ideas turn into economic impact.
Innovation clusters are geographic concentrations of inventors, researchers, and venture capitalists driving the development of new technologies, products, and services. This year’s ranking introduces a significant new dimension: for the first time, venture capital (VC) activity has been added to the analysis alongside patent filings and scientific publications. This provides a more comprehensive picture of innovation ecosystems worldwide and reveals important shifts in the global innovation landscape.
The ranking identifies 100 clusters across 33 economies, highlighting both established innovation powerhouses and rapidly emerging hubs in middle-income economies. These clusters represent the world’s densest concentrations of knowledge creation and commercialization, underscoring the growing role of investment in translating research into real-world impact.
Key findings from the launch include:

  • Beijing (China) ranks fourth, followed by Seoul (Republic of Korea), Shanghai–Suzhou (China) and New York City (US).
  • The global top 100 innovation clusters are spread across 33 economies. Countries with the most clusters are China (24), US (22), Germany (7), India and the United Kingdom (4 each) and Canada, Japan and the Republic of Korea (3 each).
  • In addition to China and India, several other middle-income economies host clusters in the top 100. These include Brazil with São Paulo (49th); Egypt with Cairo (83rd), the only global top 100 innovation cluster in Africa; Iran with Tehran (63rd); Malaysia with Kuala Lumpur (86th) and its cross-border cluster shared with Singapore (16th); Türkiye with Istanbul (58th); and Mexico with Mexico City (79th).
  • The top three clusters for scientific publications are Beijing (4% of the global total), Shanghai–Suzhou (2.5%), and Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Guangzhou (2.4%).
  • San Jose–San Francisco (US) and Cambridge (UK) rank as the most innovation-intensive clusters relative to their population size, followed by Boston–Cambridge (US), Ningde (China), and Oxford (UK).

Learn more about the GII 2025 Cluster Ranking here.
The 2025 GII Ranking of the World’s Top 100 Innovation Clusters chapter excerpt was launched ahead of the GII unveiling on September 16, 2025. Learn more and register for the global launch event here.
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