5 Most Innovative Countries in the World

#3 Japan

Japan ranks #3 on our list given it has a larger GDP than Germany with a nominal gross domestic product of $4.937 trillion last year. The country also spent 3.26% of its GDP in 2020 on research and development expenditures, which is a little higher than what Germany spent. While it has fewer top 100 S&T clusters with 5 according to GII, some of the country’s S&T clusters are bigger as Japan’s Tokyo–Yokohama science & technology cluster ranks #1 in the world.