East Asia houses world’s five biggest science and technology clusters

• S&T clusters in certain emerging economies grew at a particularly fast pace, including Brazil, India, Turkey and, beyond the top 100, in Argentina, Egypt, Thailand and others.

East Asia houses the world’s five biggest science and technology (S&T) clusters in the world, according to an early release from the 2023 edition of WIPO’s Global Innovation Index (GII).

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.

All five top clusters are in East Asia, with the San Jose-San Francisco cluster in the US at number six.

“Science and technology clusters are among the most-critical components for the innovation performance of any economy. By bringing science, businesses and entrepreneurs together, these cities or regions are able to build an ecosystem that translates scientific ideas into on-the-ground impact,” Daren Tang, Director General of WIPO, said in a statement.

Moreover, he said that it is also heartening to see that these S&T clusters are growing at a particularly fast pace in emerging economies.

The Cambridge cluster in the United Kingdom and San Jose-San Francisco, CA in the United States are found to be 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, Turkey and, beyond the top 100, in Argentina, Egypt, Thailand and others.