Innovation is now widely recognized as a central driver of economic growth and development. The Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing a rich database of detailed metrics for 128 economies, which represent 92.8% of the world’s population and 97.9% of global GDP. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted at the UN Economic and Social Council in 2013, the GII is a ‘unique tool for refining innovation policies… for providing an accurate picture on the role of science, technology and innovation in sustainable development’. Since the first edition of the GII, science and innovation have become more open, collaborative, and geographically dispersed. As the quest for innovative solutions expands, the likelihood of technological breakthroughs or affordable innovations—in areas as varied as health and the environment—increases. Yet innovation has sometimes not been portrayed as a global win-win proposition. On the contrary, most metrics and policies are designed at and for the national level. The analysis in this year’s edition, The Global Innovation Index 2016: Winning with Global Innovation, is dedicated to this theme, paving the way for improved policy making that takes into account today’s potential for collaborative global innovation.