GitHub commits join WIPO's innovation rankings
For 15 years, the World Intellectual Property Organization's Global Innovation Index (GII) has ranked economies using a basket of indicators intended to capture their innovation output. This year's edition adds a new measure: developer creative output, derived from GitHub commit data.
The inclusion marks the first time GitHub data has been used in the GII, giving policymakers and businesses a more complete picture of where code-driven innovation happens. Traditional metrics such as patents and research papers have tended to overlook the contributions of developers, particularly those working on open source infrastructure and applications.
How the new indicator works
The new indicator is defined as commit pushes received, scaled by working age population (ages 15-69). Commit pushes are assigned to the economy where the recipient of the contribution is located, not where the contributor is based.
This design choice means the index recognizes economies whose code attracts global contributions. Scaling by working age population is meant to allow fair comparison across countries, without penalizing economies with large youth populations who have not yet entered the developer workforce.
Making invisible innovation visible
The GII rankings are used by policymakers and businesses to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of innovation ecosystems, informing decisions about policy and investment. Adding developer activity to that assessment broadens the definition of what counts as innovation output.
The move is part of a wider push to make developer-led innovation more measurable and better understood. There are plans to support further research into the impact of developer communities and to supply data to additional indices that inform policy. Feedback and ideas for improving the indicators or identifying new partners are being collected in a GitHub issue.
