Ireland remains one of the world’s most innovative economies, according to a new report which ranks Switzerland in first place.

Overall, 11 of the top 20 ranked economies are European, including the top three. Ireland comes in 10th place, unchanged from a year earlier.

The Republic scores highly in areas such as tech exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) net flows, but less well in terms of spending on education and knowledge transfer.

The Global Innovation Index is co-published by Cornell University, the INSEAD business school, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

It ranks 126 economies across 80 indicators, ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications.

According to the latest index, the Republic is ranked fourth in the world in two sub-indices: infrastructure, and knowledge and technology outputs.

The State comes in 10th place globally for market sophistication and in 17th spot for both institutions and human capital and research.

Creative output

Ireland is 19th place overall in terms of creative outputs but scores badly in market sophistication, which includes the value of domestic credit to the private sector, ease of getting credit, intensity of local competition, and market scale. The State comes 29th globally in this particular category.

Switzerland earned the top position for the eighth consecutive year in the latest rankings. It came first in various patent and IP-related indicators, as well as second in high- and medium-high-tech manufacturing production. It was also among global leaders in research and development spending, and the quality of local universities.

China enters the top 20 most innovative economies for the first time, coming in at number 17 in this year’s index.

“China’s rapid rise reflects a strategic direction set from the top leadership to developing world-class capacity in innovation and to moving the structural basis of the economy to more knowledge-intensive industries that rely on innovation to maintain competitive advantage,” said WIPO director general Francis Gurry.

The United States falls two places to sixth overall, while the UK is up one place to fourth.

The world’s most innovative economies:

1 .Switzerland

2. Netherlands

3. Sweden

4. UK

5. Singapore

6. US

7. Finland

8. Denmark

9. Germany

10. Ireland