"Continued efforts made in Singapore around education, such as coding and artificial intelligence, and innovation, such as sandpits and incubators, are bound to improve the country's output score in the future," added Dr Lanvin, who is also co-author of the annual rankings.
The report noted that the innovation secret of small economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg is to act as regional hubs for trade and investment.They are also strong in financial services, it added, pointing out that the economies' high scores demonstrate an excellent environment that is supportive of innovation, has good regulatory quality and makes it easy to start a business.
One way for the Republic to achieve its aim to be a key node along the global innovation supply chain is to help enterprises innovate and scale up, the report added. The index measures 129 economies based on 80 indicators such as intellectual property filing rates, mobile-application creation and education spending.
Singapore ranked behind Switzerland, Sweden, the US, the Netherlands, Britain, Finland and Denmark in the overall global ranking.