The U.S. is out of the top 10 most innovative countries list according to a new Bloomberg Innovation Index report. This is the first time in six years that the U.S. has failed to make it to the top ten. South Korea was ranked number one on the list with Sweden coming in second. The Bloomberg Innovation Index is designed to assess innovation in countries based on seven important metrics. They include research, development, concentration, and spending of high-tech public companies amongst a host of other factors.
The Bloomberg Index noted that the U.S. dropped from position 9 to 11 due to a slump in the efficiency of post-secondary education. Although there was an improvement in the productivity score, there was also a decline in value-added manufacturing. The share of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force also declined. All these factors contributed to the drop in the innovation index.
Sadly, many experts believe that this trend will continue in the near future. According to Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C., unlike the U.S., other countries in the world are providing incentives to enhance innovations including tax breaks on research and development, public sector research funding, and increased capital provision for the commercialization of technology initiatives.
There were also big movers on the list too. Singapore, for example, jumped from the 7th position last year to 3rd. The small Asian country surpassed European countries such as Germany, Finland, and Switzerland based on the good performance in the tertiary-efficiency category, a metric which tracks post-secondary education. However, this didn’t come as a surprise. According to Professor Yeo Kiat Seng at the Singapore University of Technology and Design, the country has always invested heavily in educating its people, especially in STEM disciplines.
The performance of South Korea was quite notable though. It’s the fifth year in a row that the Asia-Pacific nation is ranking first in the Bloomberg Innovation Index. Samsung Electronics has been leading innovations in the country and just to put things into perspective, only IBM has received more U.S. patents than Samsung Electronics since the turn of the millennium.
China also saw a slight improvement in the rankings. The Bloomberg report noted that the largest economy in Asia moved two spots to 19th in the world. The move was spearheaded by an increase in the total number of science and engineering graduates in the country. There was also an increase in the number of patents filed and approved during the period under review.
Europe dominated the top ten list. There were six European countries in the top ten list including France which moved from 11th to 9th. Sweden was ranked second with Germany, Switzerland, and Finland also making it in the top ten. Asian countries on the list included Japan, Singapore, and the global-innovation gold medalist South Korea. The top ten list was rounded up by Israel, the only country that scored better than South Korea when it came to the research and development category.
