Switzerland came second in this year’s World Digital Competitive Ranking, which ranks 67 nations across the world.
The 2024 World Digital Competitiveness Ranking, produced annually by IMD, placed Singapore at the top, followed by Switzerland and Denmark.
This year’s ranking is the highest for Switzerland over the eight years that the report has been published.
Switzerland progressed significantly in high-tech exports (9th), e-participation (up 11 places to 27th), and cyber security (11th). Its key strengths are intellectual property rights, international experience, communications technology, knowledge transfer, and drawing highly skilled foreign personnel. In 2023, Switzerland was ranked fifth.
Switzerland typically leads the world on the per capita number of patents. In 2021, it had more than double the number of patents per capita of second placed Sweden.
Although Switzerland has made significant progress, particularly in the areas of cybersecurity, high-tech exports and e-participation, there are still areas where Switzerland could improve, in particular, digital identity and electronic patient records.
This year, the US dropped three places to 4th in the IMD ranking. This might be explained by the high cost of enforcing contracts and a legal environment characterised by frequent litigation, said the report’s authors. However, it came first by a large margin in the Computer Science Education Index measure, which creates a country score by using data from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. It balances the quantity and quality in both absolute and per capita measurements to indicate how an economy’s universities and graduates perform on the world stage. This is relevant for the development of home-grown talent and to attract the finest minds from around the world. The US was followed by the UK and China.
More on this:
IMD report (in English)
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