Where the world’s R&D capital actually went — and which geographies an MVP studio should follow it into.
An early-stage MVP studio serving funded startups wanted to expand its delivery footprint in 2025, but only into geographies that were genuinely investing in innovation. We built the evidence base, ranked the candidate markets, and named the three sectors the studio should lead with.
What the client faced.
The studio’s thesis was that APAC, specifically Singapore and Korea, would overtake the traditional innovation leaders within five years. The thesis was plausible. But plausible does not earn a sales-and-delivery investment in a new geography.
They needed a single document that would put real numbers behind the bet, identify which sectors to lead with, and tell them whether their APAC instinct was the right call or whether they were about to over-rotate.
The deliverable, in concrete terms.
A 35-page Innovation Trends 2024 report drawing on the Global Innovation Index, regional R&D spend filings, sector-level funding data, and interviews with founders operating across the candidate geographies. We ranked the markets, mapped innovation spend by region, and identified the ten technologies that were drawing the most strategic attention in high-innovation economies.
The headline finding: the US, Switzerland, and Sweden held the top three positions for the third consecutive year, but APAC, led by Singapore and Korea, was building the steepest growth curves. Healthcare and deep tech showed up as the highest-priority R&D sectors across nearly every market we examined.
Result — The studio used the report’s shortlist to build a lead list for market expansion in 2025, with healthcare and deep-tech founders as the lead-in customer profile.
Three differentiators that made this engagement different.
Indexed, then interrogated
The Global Innovation Index gives you a ranking. It does not tell you which sectors will pay the bills. We started from the index and then went deeper by sector, by region, by funding stage.
Five-year forward view
A report on where R&D money is today is interesting. A report on where it is heading is decision-grade. We weighted the rankings toward the growth curves, not the current totals.
Founder-validated
The numbers were stress-tested with founders actually operating in the candidate markets. The thesis survived contact with reality, with one regional adjustment the studio acted on immediately.