IMD sees Japan’s competitiveness sliding further

Norbert Gehrke
Tokyo FinTech
Published in
3 min readDec 4, 2023

The IMD has completed its annual cycle of publishing three distinct country rankings — for overall competitiveness, digital competitiveness, and talent — which see Japan sliding further across all dimensions.

Overall Competitiveness: 35th Place

The IMD World Competitiveness Ranking analyzes and ranks the capacity of countries to create and maintain an environment which sustains the competitiveness of enterprises. It has been published since 1989 by the IMD World Competitiveness Center.

Pillars of Competitiveness

Given that 64 nations are covered in the survey, Japan manages to (almost) stretch across the full ratings spectrum when it comes to the individual components. Top ten performances for Employment, Scientific Infrastructure as well as Health & Environment contrast with bottom ten rankings for International Trade, Prices, Public Finance, and Management Practices.

Digital Ranking: 32nd Place

The IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking introduces several new criteria to measure countries’ ability to adopt and explore digital technologies leading to transformation in government practices, business models and society in general.

The digital ranking is not quite as extreme as for overall competitiveness, with only one top ten and one bottom ranking, for Technological Framework and Business Agility, respectively.

Although trending down as well, it is noteworthy that the digital ranking is higher than the overall competitiveness ranking.

Talent Ranking: 43rd Place

The IMD World Talent Ranking assesses the extent to which countries develop, attract and retain talent to sustain the pool that enterprises employ to create long-term value.

The talent ranking is the weakest by far, and the future readiness is of particular concern. For talent, there are top ten rankings for “Attracting & Retaining Talent”, “Remuneration of Management”, and “Educational Assessment (PISA)”. On the flip side, there are bottom ten rankings for the “Cost of Living Index”, “International Experience”, “Competent Senior Managers”, “University Education”, “Management Education”, and “Language Skills”.

Please check out the Japan country page and download the detailed country ratings for more detail.

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Norbert Gehrke
Tokyo FinTech

Passionate about strategy & innovation across Asia. At home in Japan. Connector of people & ideas.