The Global Innovation Index

click for interactive inforgraphic


Source: Bloomberg

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  1. BoulderPatentGuy commented on Jan 26

    Cool graphic. Unlike some of the other highlighted countries, investing in post-secondary education and STEM graduates in the U.S. would essentially enable the U.S. to be “by far” the most innovative nation in the world. All it would take is a few relatively simple policy changes to encourage these degrees, which would have a dramatic effect on our economy – for the better. Even so, it’s still pretty amazing that a country as diverse and as large as the U.S. (as compared to the other countries ranked higher than us) does so well overall.

    • winstongator commented on Jan 27

      We could encourage Americans to go into stem, but we could also make it easier for talented foreigners to stay in the US. Our tech business has strong foundations with immigrants, and with the world today, we should do more to expand that. How much has the H1B system changed in 20 years?

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Jan 27

      A few simple changes, like hiring qualified Americans in preference to H1-B indentured servants or outsourcing the whole engineering project to China.

  2. trafficengineer commented on Jan 26

    What is missing from the list is also an interesting thing to look at – India. 1.2 billion people and not in the Top 50 for innovation. That is something.

    • winstongator commented on Jan 27

      I couldn’t tell for all the measures, but there is a strong per-capita lean to the measures. Per the CIA, India’s literacy rate is only 62.8%, and just above 50% for women. Compare that to 95% for China. For all its problems, China has done a much better job bringing up all its people than India has.

      South Korea is the real story here, and where I’d point is the success of Hyundai & Kia. Their reputations have not improved because of styling, but because of vastly improved reliability.

  3. GeorgeBurnsWasRight commented on Jan 27

    Two things. First, the overall ranking depends upon how the various factors are weighted, so the validity of the weighting method needs in-depth discussion, which I couldn’t find in the article.

    Second, Russia being at number 14 surprised me. From what I’ve read, their economy is mostly based on natural resources, and has always lagged behind in most areas of technology for various historical reasons. So I’d expect their ranking to be lower. On the other hand, I expected Hong Kong to be higher than 34.

    • Iamthe50percent commented on Jan 27

      Lagging technology? They were the first to launch a satellite and they possess the only working manned launch systems still in existence.

  4. ilsm commented on Jan 27

    R&D is as percent (could use currency deflated measure?) GDP. For US if you took away “security”: pentagon, DHS, DoE (nuclear arms) and DoT (Coast Guard, etc); US R&D percent as GDP would look more like Greece.

    A lot of “security” related R&D is for scrap and rework in the “detailed design and integration”, a lot of other “security” R&D is in things like star wars, stealth, snooping, etc. which have huge technical problems beyond solution and should have stayed in the lab.

    Similar for manufacturing “value added.”

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