Chinese Cluster Now World's Top Innovation Hotspot, UN Says

Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou has overtaken Tokyo-Yokohama to become the world's top cluster for innovation, the United Nations said Monday. From a report: The UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said the Chinese cluster had leapfrogged its Japanese rival in its 2025 Global Innovation Index. The change at the top of the world's 100 leading innovation clusters was down to WIPO broadening the criteria to include venture capital investments to formulate the annual rankings.

The UN agency dealing with patenting and innovation previously only used patent filing and scientific publishing data to identify local concentrations of world-leading innovation activity. 'Venture capital investment activity helps capture how scientific and technological knowledge translates into start-up creation and, ultimately, new goods and services in the marketplace,' WIPO said. The agency said Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Tokyo-Yokohama 'make a massive contribution to global scientific publications and patenting outputs', together accounting for nearly one in five patent applications filed globally.

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