Innovation: What Vietnam can learn from leading global models
WVR - From Switzerland to the Republic of Korea, each country chooses a different path to foster innovation. However, behind these differences lie common principles that play a crucial role in national competitiveness.
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| Despite significant differences in scale, development level, and strategy, leading economies in innovation worldwide have all built effective innovation ecosystems. (Source: AI-generated image) |
From Switzerland to the Republic of Korea, each country chooses a different path to foster innovation. However, behind these differences lie common principles that are decisive for national competitiveness.
Amid global economic fluctuations, maintaining sustainable innovation momentum is becoming an urgent requirement for all nations. According to the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2025 report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), countries like Switzerland, Sweden, the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Singapore are leading centres in the global knowledge ecosystem, ranked from 1 to 5 respectively.
The "formula" of leading nations
Despite significant differences in scale, development level, and strategy, leading economies have built effective innovation ecosystems, where the synergy between the state, the business sector, and the knowledge system plays a decisive role.
Switzerland stands out with a knowledge-based innovation model and globally significant innovation clusters, where the efficiency of transforming knowledge into economic value is the highest in the world.
According to GII 2025, Switzerland ranks number 1 globally for the 15th consecutive year, also ranking 2nd in "innovation input" and 1st in "output", demonstrating superior conversion efficiency.
The distinctive feature of this model is the close integration between multinational corporations, high-tech enterprises, and leading universities and research institutes like the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) or the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPF Lausanne), forming deeply interconnected innovation clusters.
As a result, Switzerland not only leads in indicators such as intellectual property income (IP receipts), access to information and communication technology (ICT), or the number of open-source contributions (GitHub) per capita, but also maintains a top 5 position in most innovation pillars. It is evident that Switzerland's model does not focus on expanding investment scale but on designing a system to maximize added value from knowledge.
Meanwhile, Sweden operates a model where the welfare state serves as a foundation for nurturing long-term and sustainable innovation. Ranked 2nd globally in GII 2025, Sweden clearly demonstrates the ability to efficiently transform input resources into innovation outcomes, with "output" surpassing "input".
One of the highlights is that the country ranks first in the world for the number of researchers per million inhabitants and is among the leaders in global brand value (as a percentage of GDP) and the proportion of the workforce in knowledge economy sectors.
The core operation of Sweden is the combination of substantial public investment in education, science and technology, and a comprehensive social security system, minimizing risks for creative activities. Simultaneously, large enterprises like Ericsson, Volvo, along with a network of small and medium-sized high-tech enterprises, are closely linked with research institutions, focusing on areas such as green technology, Industry 4.0, and digital transformation. Therefore, Sweden can establish a stable institutional environment where innovation is not disrupted by short-term fluctuations.
The United States operates an innovation model based on a highly developed market mechanism, where the business sector and financial system play a central role in resource allocation. The country ranks 3rd globally in GII 2025, also leading the world in the two pillars of "market sophistication" and "business sophistication", as well as being the leader in total R&D expenditure and the number of largest R&D investing corporations.
The highlight of this model lies in the convergence and dissemination of knowledge through large-scale innovation clusters with 22 leading global innovation clusters, where the San Jose–San Francisco cluster (Silicon Valley) leads the world in innovation intensity per capita. This strength is formed from the close link between top research universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, Harvard, and multinational technology corporations.
Additionally, the United States maintains a selective support mechanism for small and medium-sized enterprises through national coordination programs like the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), thereby promoting digital transformation and enhancing production capacity, with over 33,500 manufacturers supported in 2024.
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| Silicon Valley in the United States leads the world in innovation intensity per capita. (Source: Behance) |
For the Republic of Korea, the innovation model is highly centralized, combining the strategic orientation of the state with the leading role of the high-tech business sector. In GII 2025, the Republic of Korea ranks 4th globally – the highest ever for the Northeast Asian nation – also ranking 4th in "input" but only 6th in "output", reflecting a certain gap between investment capacity and conversion efficiency. Nevertheless, the country still leads the world in the "human capital and research" pillar and is among the leaders in R&D expenditure and the number of international patents.
The distinctive feature is the very high proportion of R&D dominated by businesses, with corporations like Samsung, SK Hynix, or LG playing a central role. The state focuses on directing and allocating resources to priority areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, and biotechnology, while also setting requirements for shifting towards enhancing commercialization efficiency to bridge the gap between "input" and "output".
Singapore operates an innovation model following the "Global-Asia node" strategy, using tight state planning to transform the island nation into a technology launchpad and global business connector. The core strength lies in superior input capacity, leading the world in institutional quality, governance efficiency, and FDI attraction capability, providing a stable foundation for innovation.
Singapore also stands out as the economy with the most global leading indicators (10/78 indicators), notably in areas such as high-tech manufacturing, unicorn value ratio to GDP, and the concentration level of innovative enterprises. Additionally, the country maintains a long-term development orientation through 5-year cycle RIE (Research, Innovation, and Enterprise) plans, ensuring continuity in investment and resource coordination, helping the innovation ecosystem not only grow rapidly but also maintain stability and adaptability in the long term.
Overall, although these models differ in approach, they converge on several common principles. First, maintaining high and stable R&D investment in the long term. Second, establishing close links between the state, businesses, and the research system. Third, businesses play a central role in implementing innovation, and fourth, deep international integration helps leverage global knowledge and capital flows. Thus, the "success formula" lies not only in the scale of resources but also in the ability to organize the innovation ecosystem. However, each model also has certain limitations, indicating that there is no universal template that can be applied intact to every country.
Implications for Vietnam
In this context, Vietnam ranks 44/139 in GII 2025 and continues to be in the group of "countries with innovation results exceeding expectations" for 15 consecutive years. Vietnam has strengths in output indicators such as high-tech exports and creative goods, but still has limitations in input pillars like institutions, human resources, and infrastructure.
From international experience, a number of important policy directions can be drawn for Vietnam. First, a long-term innovation strategy needs to be developed, ensuring consistency in resource allocation and closely tied to economic development orientation. Second, it is necessary to strengthen the link between the state, businesses, and research institutions in a substantive manner, where businesses play a central role in implementing and commercializing technology.
Third, it is essential to improve the quality of human resources and technology infrastructure, especially in digital and high-tech fields, considering this as the foundation of innovation. Fourth, effectively leveraging international integration to attract technology, capital, and talent, thereby participating more deeply in global innovation networks. Fifth, shifting the focus from increasing expenditure to enhancing the efficiency of resource allocation and utilization, ensuring the creation of real added value for the economy.
In the context of increasingly fierce global competition, innovation is not only a tool to enhance productivity but also a decisive factor in a country's position in the global value chain. Correctly identifying the essence of successful models and flexibly applying them to practical conditions will be the basis for Vietnam to gradually build an effective innovation ecosystem, thereby laying the foundation for sustainable growth in the coming period.
