Ranked: World’s Most Forward-Thinking Countries, 2024

CEOWORLD magazine has recently ranked countries based on their ability to quickly anticipate and implement change at the grassroots level. In today’s fast-paced world, where change happens in an instant, nations are competing in a global tech race to develop futuristic technology, and some countries are leading the way in anticipating change and helping their citizens adapt to it.

According to the magazine’s rankings, Luxembourg emerged as the most forward-thinking country in the world for 2024. Liechtenstein and Monaco followed closely in second and third place, respectively. The 2023 rankings placed Switzerland in fourth ahead of Norway, while Ireland ranked sixth and Singapore seventh.

Overall, the top 10 most forward-thinking countries for 2024 include the United States, Iceland, and Denmark in the eighth, ninth, and tenth positions, respectively.

Most forward thinking countries in the world, 2024

Detailed findings & methodology: Researchers at CEOWORLD magazine have compiled, analyzed, and compared 164 countries across 10 categories to determine the rankings. These categories are the availability of government online services, mobile accessibility, bureaucratic, cashless payments, availability of high-speed internet at home, entrepreneurial, innovative, technological expertise, open access to the internet, and digitally forward-thinking lifestyles.

To evaluate these dimensions, researchers looked at 36 indicators that fell into one of these categories. They created an index that scores individual indicators on a scale of 1-100. Each individual indicator was given equal weighting within each of the five categories, with some indicators being comprised of two to three sub-indicators that were also weighted equally.

This study is based on a detailed global perceptions-based survey conducted between January to March 2024 by CEOWORLD magazine of 120,000 business decision-makers. CEOWORLD magazine put together a panel of experts to go over data points culled from sources like the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), World Economic Forum, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), U.S. News & World Report, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and the World Bank.

The final choice of countries was judged editorially, as was their position on the list, based on a consensus from these sources. All data is for the most recent period available. Some countries and territories were not included in the official statistics for various reasons, primarily due to the lack of necessary data. Also, countries and territories with low initial scores were excluded from the list as the comparison would create misleading results.

The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 120,000 respondents is plus or minus 1.2 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that as in all survey research, there are possible sources of error—such as coverage, nonresponse, and measurement error—that could affect the results.

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