The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has selected the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou city cluster as the world’s top innovation hub, due to a new ranking involving venture capital deals. For the first time in five years, the Chinese cluster surpassed Tokyo-Yokohama in Japan to claim top spot in the 2025 Global Innovation Index released by WIPO. Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan said that the addition of venture capital deals as a key indicator in the index was essential for inspiring ideas to emerge as real-world enterprises. “Hong Kong is Asia’s premier financial center. We offer deep liquidity, a wide spectrum of financing channels and a supportive environment for innovation,” Chan said at this year’s index launch event, which was hosted in the city for the first time at the Science Park. “Hong Kong is blessed with a vibrant ecosystem of angel investors, venture capital and private equity funds, supporting companies at every stage of growth.” The Finance Secretary also underscored that Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area were exceptionally well positioned to become one of the world’s most dynamic and influential innovation clusters, with the city playing a pivotal role.
Carsten Fink, Chief Economist of WIPO’s Department for Economics and Data Analytics, said the new metric of venture capital deals played a role alongside a cluster’s existing strengths in patent filings and scientific publications. He said all three metrics were given equal weight in the ranking, with the data used for venture capital including more than 236,000 deals across 66,000 locations worldwide. “We don’t just want to track science and technology activity. We also want to see how clusters turn ideas into entrepreneurship and ultimately new products and services that emerge in the marketplace,” Fink said.
Third place in the index was taken by San José-San Francisco, followed by Beijing and Seoul. Shanghai-Suzhou was in the sixth spot, followed by New York City and London, Boston-Cambridge, and Los Angeles. Among the top 100 global innovation clusters this year, 33 economies were represented. China had the most with 24 clusters, followed by the United States with 22 and Germany with seven. WIPO reported that the top 10 clusters globally accounted for a significant share of all innovation activity, contributing 40% of the world’s patent applications and 35% of its venture capital deals. The Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster registered 6,916 venture capital deals in 2025, a figure that placed it sixth among the top 10. In this category, San José-San Francisco led the ranking. In scientific research, the cluster’s output of 193,605 publications put it in third place, trailing Beijing and Shanghai-Suzhou. Its 117,542 patent applications, meanwhile, secured the second position after Tokyo-Yokohama.
Hong Kong Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong said that the three key evaluation metrics for the rankings were priorities for governments around the world, and that authorities would press on with these areas. “We must continue to increase the number of our patent applications. We also need to further strengthen our advantage in fundamental research by publishing more scientific articles,” Sun said. “Third, and also very important, we need to attract more venture capital to Hong Kong to develop more start-ups.” Sun said venture capital was a key pillar for future development, with past initiatives yielding positive results. He cited the Innovation and Technology Venture Fund, which had attracted more than HKD18 billion in private funding, and a university support scheme that helped over 620 student-led start-ups.
WIPO Chief Economist Fink said Hong Kong was a “really important scientific hub” where the major universities rank among the top institutions in the world and that WIPO’s data was reflected in the scientific publication output. “You also have interesting examples where scientific ideas that emerged from Hong Kong then led to start-ups across the border and led to companies.” He added that most of the patenting output of the cluster came from the Shenzhen area, particularly companies such as Huawei and Tencent. “These are some of the major patent filers worldwide and they are located in this cluster. I think the venture capital deal activity you see on both sides of the border, but of course, Hong Kong is also an important source of financing for innovative activities in this cluster.” The Chief Economist also noted that governments in successful innovation clusters, including Hong Kong, should focus on maintaining the existing ecosystem and adapting to new technological trends such as artificial intelligence (AI), the South China Morning Post reports.
