Innovation is a vital driver of sustainable growth and competitiveness in the Caribbean, yet measuring it remains a challenge. This article explores how the Global Innovation Index (GII) can serve as a valuable benchmark for assessing the region’s innovation performance.
At the recently concluded ICT Week 2025, organised by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), which was held in Jamaica under the theme, Driving Change: Connecting Futures, one of the keynote speakers was the Honourable Ambassador Audrey Marks, the Minister for Efficiency, Innovation, and Digital Transformation in the Office of the Prime Minister in Jamaica. Ambassador Marks’ talk focused on innovation, in which she urged Caribbean government and business leaders to collectively position the region as a hub for innovation, design, and AI-driven problem-solving. She also stated that regional collaboration is key to building an AI services sector that captures value from the AI economy, rather than simply observing it (Source: Jamaica Information Service).
The emphasis on innovation is not new. It seems to enjoy cyclical prominence where it is a buzzword among Caribbean policymakers, but all too often, no blueprint or guidance is provided on how greater innovation can be realised. To her credit, Ambassador Marks highlighted some areas that the regional leaders should address:
- Accelerating human capital development
- Investing heavily in digital infrastructure
- Digitally transforming government via speed-like programmes
- Forging public-private partnerships
- Adopting and harmonising regional frameworks, and
- Speaking with one voice globally to shape AI governance.
However, we also need to confront another challenge: being able to measure innovation and thus determine whether or not, or the extent to which, growth in innovation has occurred. Truth be told, the region has not made a habit of putting the requisite systems in place to track and measure its performance—though it continually complains about the lack of data with which to make informed decisions.
The Global Innovation Index
The Global Innovation Index (GII), prepared by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), uses a comprehensive framework of indicators grouped into Innovation Input and Innovation Output sub-indices. The results of these two sub-indices are averaged to produce an overall GII score.
For the 2025 exercise, 78 different indicators were examined, which were organised into seven pillars, which in turn were rolled up into the Innovation Input and Innovation Output sub-indices (see Exhibit 1). The Innovation Input sub-Index considers economic factors that foster and enable innovative activities, whilst the Innovation Output sub-Index seeks to capture innovative activities manifested across economic systems.
According to the published methodology, the values for each sub-pillar were derived from the weighted averaging of indicator scores, normalised to generate 0 to 100 scale results, and the overall pillar scores emerge through the weighted averaging of constituent sub-pillar values.
Key considerations for the region
Since Caribbean countries appear eager to focus more on innovation, the GII methodology ought to be given high consideration as a methodology that could be followed to measure innovation. In the 2025 exercise, only four Caribbean countries were included: Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, but the GII aims to be inclusive of emerging economies and did include countries such as Malawi, Cote d’Ivoire, Madagascar and Burkina Faso. Hence, subject to some advocacy by Caribbean countries not included in the assessment and their cooperation to secure the survey data, a better and more inclusive representation of the region could be achieved.
Nevertheless, the GII’s seven pillars cover the key dimensions of an innovation ecosystem, and the methodology shared could provide a blueprint to execute a similar assessment. However, noting that Caribbean economies are dominated by micro, small and medium enterprises and service-based sectors, such as tourism and financial services, there might be particular value in focusing on the following areas within the GII framework:
- ICT Infrastructure (Pillar 3): Given the shift towards digital services and remote work, metrics such as mobile-cellular subscriptions and fixed broadband penetration are crucial for measuring the basic infrastructure enabling digital innovation.
- Business Sophistication (Pillar 5): Indicators related to foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows and university/industry research collaboration are important for measuring the extent to which links are being established between foreign investment and academic institutions to drive local innovation.
- Creative Outputs (Pillar 7): A critical area, especially given the region’s strong cultural and creative industries (e.g. music, art, festivals). Indicators such as cultural and creative service exports and trademarks are highly relevant and may highlight an area that is woefully underdeveloped and deserving of attention.
- Innovation Efficiency: The GII also calculates the Innovation Efficiency Ratio, which is Innovation Output Sub-Index divided by Innovation Input Sub-Index. Caribbean countries often score better on inputs (the enabling environment) than on outputs (the results), which may indicate a need to focus on converting investments and enabling conditions into measurable innovations.
Image credit: rawpixel.com (Freepik)
