Appendix II - Joint Research Centre (JRC) statistical audit of the 2025 Global Innovation Index

Robust and reliable monitoring frameworks are the highways to better policymaking. As much as in other socio-economic fields, understanding and modeling innovation at both national and global levels is crucial for identifying emerging trends and informing future strategies, but it also presents conceptual and practical challenges. The 18th edition of Global Innovation Index (GII) 2025 addresses these issues by organizing data from 139 economies across 78 indicators into a structured framework of 21 sub-pillars, seven pillars, two sub-indices, and an overall index. This appendix delves into the practical challenges of constructing the GII, examining the statistical robustness of the conceptual framework and the robustness of the calculations and assumptions used to determine the final rankings. The JRC-COIN analysis affirms that the multilevel structure of the GII 2025, encompassing 78 indicators, 21 sub-pillars, seven pillars, and two sub-indices, is statistically robust and well-balanced. Each sub-pillar contributes similarly to the variation within its respective pillar, ensuring a coherent and reliable framework. All published GII 2025 rankings lie within the simulated 90 percent confidence intervals that take into consideration the unavoidable uncertainties inherent in an estimation of missing data, the weights (fixed vs. simulated) and the aggregation formula allowing various levels of compensability between the arithmetic and the geometric average at the pillar level.

LAGÜERA GONZÁLEZ Jaime;  RAVANOS Panagiotis;  SAISANA Michaela;  SMALLENBROEK Oscar;  GUIDI Alberto;  CANARIO BORREGA Alexandre; 

2025-11-28

World Intellectual Property Organization

JRC144311

2788-6972 (online),   

https://www.wipo.int/web-publications/global-innovation-index-2025/en/index.html,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC144311,   

10.34667/tind.58864 (online),