Core concepts
Innovation ecosystems The interconnected network of institutions, organizations and capabilities within an economy that collectively drive innovation activities. These ecosystems are analyzed through their scientific, technological, entrepreneurial, and productive dimensions.
Innovation capabilities The specialized skills, knowledge, and institutional strengths that enable economies to create competitive advantage in specific innovation fields. These capabilities are revealed through outputs in different dimensions.
Absolute specialization Captures an ecosystem’s mastery in a field by identifying global leaders in specific innovation fields based on the highest absolute volumes of output (e.g., most patents, trademarks, publications, or exports).
Relative specialization Captures competitive advantage by identifying economies that perform exceptionally well in specific fields compared to their overall innovation activity. Countries that have more output compared to their "fair share" are assumed to exhibit relative specialization.
Relatedness The degree to which different innovation capabilities share common knowledge, skills or infrastructure, determining how easily an ecosystem is able to diversify from one field to another. The relatedness is calculated by the co-production patterns in different fields that can possibly come from different dimensions.
Strategic capability diversification The strategic process of simultaneously gaining capability diversity while increasing ecosystem complexity — expanding into new complex innovation fields.
Strategic capability specialization The strategic approach of focusing resources on the most complex, high-value skills while protecting them with complementary knowledge that enables these capabilities to flourish.
Core indicators
Capability complexity A measure of how sophisticated and interconnected an innovation capability is, indicating the density of knowledge, skills, and supporting infrastructure required for successful development.
Ecosystem complexity The overall level of sophistication of an innovation ecosystem, determined by the complexity of capabilities it has mastered and the density of connections between different innovation fields.
Ease of diversification A measure of how readily an economy can access new innovation fields (fast growing or complex) based on its current capability portfolio.
Ease of diffusion The degree to which innovation capabilities spread across different economies over time, indicating whether specific fields are becoming more accessible globally or concentrating among fewer players.
Innovation potential A measure that estimates how many innovations an economy should produce in any given field based on its demonstrated capabilities in related innovation areas.
Untapped potential The gap between an economy's theoretical innovation capacity in a given field (based on its performance in related areas) and its actual innovation output.