Science and Technology Cluster Ranking 2023
The Science and Technology (S&T) Cluster ranking of the Global Innovation Index identifies local concentrations of world-leading science and technology activity. S&T clusters are established through the analysis of patent-filing activity and scientific article publication, documenting the geographical areas around the world with the highest density of inventors and scientific authors.
WIPO locates and ranks science and technology clusters through a geocoding method, mapping addresses and names pulled from documents to 96% accuracy. Find out more about the S&T Cluster methodology.
Top 100 Science and Technology Clusters worldwide 2023
Main findings
The world’s five biggest S&T clusters are all located in East Asia. Tokyo-Yokohama (Japan) leads as the largest global S&T cluster, followed by Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou (China and Hong Kong, China), Seoul (Republic of Korea), followed by China’s Beijing and Shanghai-Suzhou clusters.
The Cambridge cluster in the United Kingdom and San Jose-San Francisco, CA in the United States are found to be the clusters with the most intensive S&T activity, in proportion to population density, followed by Oxford (UK), Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Boston–Cambridge (US).
This year, the GII identifies 24 S&T clusters in China, up from the 21 last year, as the country boasting the greatest number of clusters, with Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Guangzhou, Beijing Shanghai–Suzhou, and Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Guangzhou and Nanjing leading.
The US has 21 among the top 100, Germany 9, and Japan, Canada, India and the Republic of Korea each have 4, with San Jose–San Francisco leading for the US, Munich for Germany, Tokyo-Yokohama for Japan, Toronto for Canada, Bengaluru for India, and Seoul for the Republic of Korea.
S&T clusters located in other middle-income economies besides China also saw strong S&T output growth, notably in India which has four top S&T clusters, with Chennai and Bengaluru experiencing the biggest increases in density of inventors and scientific authors.
S&T clusters in certain emerging economies grew at a particularly fast pace, including Brazil, India, Türkiye and, beyond the top 100, in Argentina, Egypt, Thailand and others.
Top 100 Science and Technology Cluster briefs 2023
For ongoing work on assisting countries to measure and improve innovation at the sub-national level see the WIPO toolkit on "Enabling Innovation Measurement at the Sub-National Level" and the dedicated WIPO General Assemblies Side Event.