Innovation in Greece is hampered by long-standing problems the country faces, since, in addition to its talent and relatively satisfactory performance in the field of information and communications technology infrastructure and online services, it continues to lag behind in areas such as the establishment of a stable environment for business and the absence of adequate connections between universities and industry on the research and development level.
The aging of the population is now added to the list of weak points, with the percentage of young people in relation to the total population being evaluated low, ranking our country in 130th place in this index.
This is reflected, among other things, in the Global Innovation Index 2025 of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which measures the performance of countries worldwide in terms of innovation. Therefore, Greece ranked 42nd among 139 economies, with countries such as Portugal (31st) and even Bulgaria (37th) faring better.
Greece’s strong points remain its human capital, due to which it has ranked among the top 30 countries for years, occupying 29th place, and in scientific publications (18th). It is also recording progress in terms of the number of graduates from high-demand faculties, in areas such as mathematics, technology, engineering and sciences (37th), while it has a satisfactory number of researchers to produce new innovations (19th), although they encounter obstacles, as funding to support research in scientific institutions is still considered low.
In terms of infrastructure, Greece’s position is satisfactory (41st), with the country ranking 36th in terms of access to technology and IT infrastructure and 45th in terms of public services.
On the other hand, despite its progress, it continues to fare poorly in the broader institutional and regulatory environment (60th), while Greece’s performance in terms of the stability of the regulatory framework for businesses is evaluated even lower (80th).
Of course, a thorn in the side, which over time puts a brake on even its competitiveness, is the low interconnection between universities and industry at the level of research and development (107th), as well as the inability to develop clusters for the production of innovation. Its performance there brings it to 125th place.