Sweden and South Korea are among the most innovative countries in the world as per the Bloomberg Innovation Index that covers aspects such as the concentration of tech companies and even the number of science and engineering graduates. The Bloomberg Innovation Index on the innovative countries has highlighted South Korea’s position as the economy whose companies filed the most patents in 2017. Bloomberg compiles this index using data from sources such as World Bank, IMF, and OECD. It credits the top ranking of South Korea to Samsung.
Samsung is the most valuable company of South Korea and enjoys more US patents than any other company other than IBC since the beginning of the millennium. The innovation brought by the company trickles down not only the supply chain but throughout South Korea’s economy.
Sweden is at the second place of this list and is enjoying an ever-growing reputation of being the tech startup capital of Europe. The Scandinavian country houses Europe’s biggest tech companies and is second only to Silicon Valley in terms of the billion-dollar tech companies that it creates per capita. The US has dropped out of the top 10 in the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index for the first time ever since the gauge began compilation since six years ago.
According to Bloomberg, the fall to the 11th place from the ninth position last year can be attributed mainly to the eight-spot slump that the US sustained in terms of its tertiary education. It now features an assessment of the share of new science and engineering graduates that become a part of the labor force. The US is now ranked 43 out of 50 nations in terms of ‘tertiary efficiency’ whereas Singapore and Iran enjoy the top spots.
Back in September of 2018, it was also revealed that the world’s two top universities had been taken by UK’s Oxford and Cambridge universities from American universities. Furthermore, Bloomberg also says that the country has lost ground because of value-added manufacturing. The country is now ranked as 23rd whereas Ireland and South Korea have taken the first two spots. Nonetheless, the Bloomberg Innovation Index ranks the US as number one when it comes to the density of tech companies and second in terms of patent activity.
Israel is also making giant leaps despite being smaller than the US state of New Jersey and also having fewer people. It houses 4,000 startups and raiser venture capital per capita at two-and-a-half times the rate of the US and about thirty times that of Europe. All of this can be boiled down to how much you are willing to invest in research and development. According to OECD, Israel spends 4.3% of its GPD on R&D as opposed to South Kore, that spends 4.2%. Switzerland spends 3.4% of its GDP on R&D and Sweden spends 3.3% whereas the US is spending only 2.8%.