The recent release of the 2026 IMD World Competitiveness Rankings has once again sparked discussion about the relative performance of national economies.

Australia improved slightly to 17th globally, while New Zealand fell to 37th. The report highlights familiar challenges around productivity, innovation adoption, investment attraction, workforce capability and economic resilience.

Rankings such as these provide a useful starting point for discussion. They offer valuable insights into economic performance and can help identify areas requiring attention. However, they are only one lens through which to view competitiveness.

For those working in clusters and innovation ecosystems, the more interesting questions often lie beneath the rankings themselves.

Competitiveness as an Ecosystem Challenge

Many of the challenges highlighted in competitiveness studies are frequently framed as organisational or firm-level issues. Yet productivity growth, innovation adoption, industry transformation and resilience increasingly depend on factors that extend well beyond individual organisations.

They are ecosystem challenges.

Competitiveness is shaped by the quality of relationships between businesses, research institutions, government agencies, investors, community organisations and other supporting actors. It is influenced by trust, collaboration, leadership, shared vision, institutional capability and the ability to mobilise collective action around opportunities and challenges.

In this context, clusters and innovation ecosystems are not peripheral to competitiveness; they are among the mechanisms through which competitiveness is created.

Strong ecosystems help organisations access knowledge, accelerate innovation, build workforce capability, develop new markets and attract investment. They create the conditions for industries and regions to adapt and evolve in response to changing economic, technological and environmental conditions.

What Gets Measured? What Gets Noticed?

One observation from the IMD rankings is that, within Oceania, only Australia and New Zealand are included.

Many Pacific Island nations are absent from the rankings altogether.

This reflects the practical realities of international benchmarking. Smaller economies often lack the scale, institutional structures or statistical datasets required to participate in global competitiveness studies.

However, it also raises an important question.

What becomes visible in our competitiveness conversations, and what remains overlooked?

Across Oceania, some of the most innovative and adaptive ecosystem approaches are emerging in places that sit outside traditional competitiveness measures. These include initiatives focused on the blue economy, climate adaptation, circular economy development, Indigenous knowledge systems, community resilience and place-based innovation.

These activities may not always be reflected in global rankings, yet they contribute significantly to long-term prosperity, resilience and wellbeing.

The risk is not that rankings are wrong. Rather, it is that we allow rankings to define the boundaries of the conversation.

The Importance of Salience

Recent attention has been given to the concept of ‘salience’ — the issues, opportunities and narratives that attract attention and influence decision-making.

Salience is not neutral. It is shaped by institutions, policies, media, funding systems and dominant economic narratives.

What receives attention is more likely to attract investment, resources and policy support. What remains invisible often struggles to gain traction regardless of its underlying importance.

This matters for clusters and innovation ecosystems.

If ecosystem development is absent from mainstream competitiveness discussions, it becomes harder to justify investments in ecosystem leadership, collaboration capability, governance, knowledge exchange and collective action. Yet these are often the very capabilities that underpin long-term competitiveness outcomes.

A Role for TCI Oceania

For TCI Oceania, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.

The challenge is to ensure that innovation ecosystems, clusters and place-based development approaches are not treated as secondary considerations, but recognised as central components of regional and national competitiveness.

The opportunity is to broaden the conversation about what competitiveness means across our diverse region and to better tell the stories of where clusters and initiatives across innovation ecosystems are achieving impact.

Oceania includes globally connected metropolitan economies, regional communities undergoing economic transition, and small island nations facing unique environmental and development challenges. Competitiveness within this context cannot be understood through a single metric alone.

It requires attention to relationships, capability, resilience, inclusion, stewardship and the ability of communities and industries to adapt to change.

Looking Beyond the Rankings

The IMD rankings provide valuable insights and should not be dismissed. However, they are perhaps most useful when they prompt deeper questions.

How do we strengthen the ecosystems that enable innovation and productivity?

How do we make ecosystem capability more visible within policy and investment conversations?

How do we better tell the stories of where clusters and initiatives across innovation ecosystems are delivering impact?

How do we ensure that the strengths and innovations emerging across all parts of Oceania are recognised and valued?

And how do we build the leadership, relationships and institutions needed to support long-term competitiveness?

Ultimately, competitiveness is not created by individual organisations acting alone. It emerges from the strength of the systems in which they operate.

Perhaps the most important question is not where we sit in the rankings, but whether we are paying enough attention to the ecosystems that shape our collective future.