Russia and innovation

Russian Federation ranks 51st among the 132 economies featured in the Global Innovation Index 2023.

Russian Federation ranks 7th among the 33 upper-middle income group economies.

Russian Federation ranks 31st among the 39 economies in Europe.

For more information, please see:

*Global Innovation Index 2023 - Russia

*Global Innovation Index 2023. Innovation in the face of uncertainty

In 2023, Russia was ranked 51st in the world as far as the Global Innovation Index. According the Global Innovation Index: "In 2023, global innovation index for Russian Federation was 33.31 index. Global innovation index of Russian Federation fell gradually from 39.14 index in 2014 to 33.31 index in 2023." (A score of 0 is the weakest a country can obtain).

The University of Birmingham reported in 2022:

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The World Intellectual Property Organisation publishes a Global Innovation Index based on an assessment of national innovation inputs and outputs. In 2021, Russia was ranked in 45th place after Vietnam and Thailand, with the United States being third and the UK fourth in the ranking. Russia’s ranking highlights that Russia is a low-tech nation. Russia's position in the Global Innovation Index is partly explained by the country's failure to invest in research and development (R&D). In 2019, the US spent 3.1% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) on R&D whilst Russia spent 1%. This can be calculated based on R&D expenditure per capita and for the US this was $1,866 compared to Russia’s expenditure of $263. It is estimated that Russia is spending $900 million a day on the Ukraine war. Russia, calculates the return on this investment in terms of territory but much greater economic and political returns would come from investing in R&D.

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The article Russian Power in Decline indicates:

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Russia’s “high education, low human capital” paradox does not end with problematic health: it shows up acutely in the country’s “knowledge production” deficit, too. Nowadays, long-term economic progress depends critically on improving productivity through knowledge — technology, management and so on — rather than through the accumulation of physical capital. But, oddly for a well-educated, mediumhigh- income country, Russia is terrible at it. The U.S. Patent Office (now known as the Patent and Trade Office, or PTO) was established in the 1830s. But nearly half of its patent awards and well over half of its awards to foreign inventers have been granted just since the year 2000. Of the 2.5 million patents awarded to foreigners between 2000 and 2020, applicants from Russia took home fewer than 6,600 — which was a smaller fraction of the total than had been awarded to the USSR during the Cold War. In the 2002-2020 period, Russia (with the world’s ninth-largest population) ranked 25th in PTO awards, behind tiny Norway and Finland. Wait, this gets better — I mean worse. The Russian Federation’s rate of PTO awards is currently on a par with the state of Alabama. But Alabama’s population is just 5 million — while Russia’s is over 140 million, very nearly 30 times larger. The contrast with high-tech California is truly remarkable. Russia’s population is over three and a half times larger, while in 2020 California produced over 80 times more patents — that’s total, not per capita. Another way to look at Russia’s underperformance in patents is to compare patent activity with educational attainment. Belgium’s 2020 “yield” of international patent applications per person with some college attendance was 15 times higher than Russia’s, while Austria’s was 23 times higher. By this reckoning, over 50 countries — not just Western countries and China, but Saudi Arabia and South Africa — came out ahead of Russia. This underperformance is reflected in foreign trade. In 2019, Russia’s share of global economic output adjusted for purchasing power was 3.1 percent. Yet Russia generated only 1 percent of total global service-sector exports. Note that service exports really amount to trade in human skills — unlike merchandise trade, which is in commodities or natural resources and thus generally less skills-intensive. Curiously, given Russia’s wellknown expertise in software, it even fares poorly in IT exports, where its 2019 share of the global market was only slightly ahead of the Philippines. Adding to the shortfall, the Ukraine invasion seems to be affecting the talent base for what there is of a knowledge economy. In the initial weeks of the war, some estimated that as many as 200,000 highly skilled Russians fled their country — many of them IT specialists. Depending on the course of that war and on Western sanctions, the bleed of talent may or may not be staunched when the guns fall silent. But it is difficult to envision a scenario in which Russia ever becomes a magnet for the best and brightest.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

In 2023, MIT Technology Review stated in its article How Russia killed its tech industry:

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In the months after the invasion began, Russia saw a mass exodus of IT workers. According to government figures, about 100,000 IT specialists left Russia in 2022, or some 10% of the tech workforce—a number that is likely an underestimate. Alongside those exits, more than 1,000 foreign firms curtailed their operations in the country, driven in part by the broadest sanctions ever to be imposed on a major economy. It has now been over a year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, with more than 8,300 recorded civilian deaths and counting. The tech workers who left everything behind to flee Russia warn that the country is well on its way to becoming a village: cut off from the global tech industry, research, funding, scientific exchanges, and critical components. Meanwhile Yandex, one of its biggest tech successes, has begun fragmenting, selling off lucrative businesses to VKontakte (VK), a competitor controlled by state-owned companies.

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VisualCapitalist.com ranked the USA 3rd in innovation in 2023.