Brazil in the Global Innovation Index: What’s Really in the Glass?
By Leonardo Cordeiro
The 2026 Global Innovation Index (GII), published on September 29 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), compares 139 economies across 79 indicators, ranging from institutions and human capital to scientific, technological, and creative outputs.
Brazil’s performance can be viewed through both a glass-half-full and a glass-half-empty lens. Glass half full: the country climbed from 66th position in 2019 to 53rd in 2026. Glass half empty: after reaching 49th place in 2023, it fell to 50th in 2024, 52nd in 2025, and 53rd this year. In Latin America and the Caribbean, it remains in second place, behind Chile (51st), and is the only economy in the region performing above expectations for its level of development for the sixth consecutive year.
Rather than debating whether the glass is half full or half empty, I propose looking at the water itself. Brazil already knows how to generate knowledge and protect it. The bottleneck lies in the next step: converting these assets into products, companies, contracts, and productivity. Intellectual property only fulfills its role when protection is connected to development, investment, and commercialization decisions, and when someone tracks the path of each asset.
Strengths That Fail to Translate into Results
The GII indicators highlight this mismatch. The country ranks 8th in trademark activity, 16th in late-stage venture capital, and 24th in utility models. However, it lags at 129th in business environment, 101st in science and engineering graduates, and 94th in labor productivity growth.
The ranking in trademarks measures application volume rather than innovation per se, but it indicates a market that values its distinctive signs. Utility models remind us that incremental innovation—which refines products and processes—also builds competitiveness. By contrast, Brazil’s weaknesses lie precisely in the conditions needed to translate knowledge into economic results: qualified personnel, a favorable entrepreneurial environment, and productivity gains.
An Active, Yet Concentrated Base
Demand for protection exists. According to INPI (Brazilian National Institute of Industrial Property), residents submitted over 400,000 trademark applications and more than 7,000 patent applications for inventions in 2025. Among the 51 largest resident patent filers, 36 (about 71%) are public entities, mainly universities and research institutes, although Stellantis and Petrobras hold the top two positions.
This base is geographically concentrated. São Paulo is the only Brazilian hub among the top 100 in WIPO’s innovation hub ranking, placing 49th, and is the highest-ranked in Latin America. The Deep Tech Radar Brazil 2025, produced by Emerge, identifies 952 science-based companies in the country, with 64% located in the Southeast and nearly half concentrated in São Paulo alone.
What Happens After Filing
Filing a patent, licensing a technology, and bringing a product to market are distinct stages. We know far more about the first than about the rest: application volume is public and tracked year by year, but there is rarely discussion about how many of these assets lead to contracts, products, or businesses. This is the part of the water we see the least.
Public research serves functions far beyond revenue generation, and a technology can take years to mature. Still, maintaining intellectual property rights costs money and requires strategy. A granted patent does not license itself: it takes a team to identify partners, negotiate agreements, and coordinate proof-of-concept projects.
The Brazilian government has made progress on part of this agenda. INPI’s digital modernization facilitates access to the system, but it must translate into high-quality examinations with timelines compatible with investment decisions. Public calls such as those from Pró-Infra—totaling an estimated R$ 1 billion—support scientific infrastructure, but their impact depends on links to later stages of technology development.
Companies must also do more. Brazil ranks 36th in corporate-funded R&D. Combining incremental improvements with higher-risk projects—leveraging university expertise—is key to the solution.
Three Steps from Diagnosis to Action
The first is to institute periodic portfolio reviews with clear criteria for deciding whether to maintain or expand protection for each asset, pursue licensing, or discontinue protection, taking into account development prospects, potential partners, and costs. Biotechnology demonstrates why this matters: expensive research, long maturation periods, regulatory requirements, and the limitations of Brazilian law regarding the protection of natural biological materials (except transgenic microorganisms) force organizations to consider patents, know-how, regulation, and commercial strategy together right from project inception.
The second is to fund proofs of concept and validation with the active involvement of potential business partners, bridging the gap between research and real-world application conditions.
The third is to evaluate technology transfer based on actual use and economic and social impact (agreements signed, products developed, and companies established), rather than solely by the number of filings.
None of these actions replaces scientific training, corporate research, or a favorable business environment. However, they depend primarily on managerial decisions and can begin right now.
The progress made since 2019 deserves recognition; the decline in positions since 2023 warrants attention. But debating whether the glass is half full or half empty matters less than deciding what to do with the water. And that decision relies on treating intellectual property not merely as a matter of filing and registration, but as a strategic asset.