TEHRAN - The 12th International Innovation and Technology Exhibition (INOTEX 2023) opened at Tehran’s Pardis Technology Park on Tuesday and will run until May 12.

With the theme of ‘innovation ecosystem under one roof’, INOTEX is Iran’s biggest technology event and the forerunner in the region, bringing technology and innovation experts around the world together to bridge the gap between innovators, investors, and traders.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Technology and Innovation Report 2021 has placed Iran among upper-middle countries in terms of readiness for frontier technologies.

The index yielded results for 158 countries with the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom receiving the highest scores on a scale of 0 to 1. Based on their rankings, countries are placed within one of four 25-percentile score groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high values of the index.

The report has put Iran in the 71st position with a total score of 0.46, higher than Qatar, Oman, and Morocco.

Iran was also placed 82 in ICT, 74 in skills, 37 in R&D, 130 in industry, and 53 in finance sectors, according to Iran National Inventions Team.

Only a few countries currently create frontier technologies, but all countries need to prepare for them.

To assess national capabilities to equitably use, adopt and adapt these technologies this report has developed a ‘readiness index’. The index comprises five building blocks: ICT deployment, skills, R&D activity, industry activity, and access to finance, according to the report.

According to the Global Innovation Index (GII 2022) report, Iran is the second most innovative country in the Central and South Asian region and the third among low-middle income countries.

Iran ranked 53rd in the world with 7 steps up compared to 2021.

According to the 2022 GII, Switzerland, the United States of America, Sweden, England, and the Netherlands are the most innovative economies in the world, and China is on the verge of entering the world’s 10 most innovative countries.

The top global companies increased their R&D spending by almost 10 percent to more than $900 billion in 2021, more than in 2019 (before the pandemic).

The drivers of this increase were mainly four industries of "Information and Communication Technology Hardware and Electrical Equipment", "Information and Communication Technology Software and Services", "Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology" and "Construction and Industrial Metals".

In the annual ranking of innovation capacity and output of world economies, key changes are observed in the top 15 countries. Vietnam (48th), Iran (53rd), and the Philippines (59th) are middle-income economies with the fastest growth in innovation performance to date.

With 7 ranks of promotion compared to 2021, Iran has been ranked 53rd in the world, second in the Central and South Asian region, and third in low-middle income countries, and for the second consecutive year, the innovation development rate is higher than expected.

Iran is leading in indicators such as trademark registration (rank 1) and science and engineering graduates (rank 2). In terms of innovation outputs, Iran has a performance similar to high-income European economies such as Latvia (rank 41) and Croatia (rank 42). 

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei designated the current Iranian year (March 2022-March 2023) as “The Year of Production: Knowledge-Based and Job-Creating”. Strengthening knowledge-based companies are on the agenda, raising hope for reducing obstacles on the path to development.

In this regard, a strategic technology development headquarters was formed and 362,000 technological projects and 154 commercialization projects were supported, in addition to the inauguration of 23 national mega projects.

Moreover, in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem development, 65 creative houses and innovation centers, and 30 specialized accelerators have been established with the aim of empowering and strengthening the export capacity of knowledge-based, creative, and technological companies.

Knowledge-based companies and creative startups have grown over the past five years, and Iran has risen 45 places in the Global Innovation Index, according to the UNESCO 2021 Report.

MG