UK Is Fourth Most Innovative Country

We’re going to come third or fourth in the footie, which is not too shabby, but what’s a much more important achievement is that we rank fourth in the world for innovation.

The Global Innovation Index, published by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO),  was published this week and SEPAM very kindly sent me a link.

There, ahead of the USA, France and Germany was the UK.

For the first time, China made it into the top 20. “China’s rapid rise reflects a strategic direction set from the top leadership to developing world-class capacity in innovation and to moving the structural basis of the economy to more knowledge-intensive industries that rely on innovation to maintain competitive advantage,” says WIPO’s director general Francis Gurtyl

The least innovative  of the 126 countries surveyed were: Bolivia, Nigeria, Guinea, Zambia, Benin, Niger, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Togo and Yemen.

Here are the top 20:

  1. Switzerland
  2. Netherlands
  3. Sweden
  4. United Kingdom
  5. Singapore
  6. United States of America
  7. Finland
  8. Denmark
  9. Germany
  10. Ireland
  11. Israel
  12. Korea, Republic of
  13. Japan
  14. Hong Kong
  15. Luxembourg
  16. France
  17. China
  18. Canada
  19. Norway
  20. Australia

 


Comments

9 comments

  1. Considering the ranking of big countries vs small countries I would guess that this is ranked per capita.
    I looked at the link but did not find a statement about this.

    It would certainly help explain how it can be that the US ranks so low despite all the VC funded startups in Silicon Valley.

  2. WEll, Mike, this is a WIPO thing, so a lot of the data is patent-related.

    • SecretEuroPatentAgentMan

      Patents play a major role but also other factors are acknowledged:
      http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/pressroom/en/documents/gii_2018_infographics.pdf
      And I agree it is strange Switzerland is at the top of the list. I think it might be due to all the big pharma companies located there, at least located there officially for tax purposes. Or it might be secondary indicators from the PDF above such as infrastructure, institutions and market sophistication.

      • I agree pharma is the one area Switzerland leads the world (unless overpriced watches are counted) but surely that’s only a small percentage of total patents ?

        It mentions education as important, but Switzerland only has one world class university whereas the UK has at least 6, probably more depending how you draw the line as world class.

        Switzerland is a great place to holiday and I go once or twice a year, but it’s never seemed that innovative to me, unless you count things like having spare seats on trains and them running on time which I agree would be innovative measures in the UK !

        • SecretEuroPatentAgentMan

          Watches are high profile but not in terms of patenting. Some statistics:
          Applicant
          Name No
          F. HOFFMANN-LA ROCHE AG 4637
          NOVARTIS AG 4474
          NESTEC S.A. 2540
          MICHELIN RECHERCHE ET TECHNIQUE S.A. 2183
          SYNGENTA PARTICIPATIONS AG 1595
          ROCHE DIAGNOSTICS GMBH 1587
          PHILIP MORRIS PRODUCTS S.A. 1334
          COMPAGNIE GENERALE DES ETABLISSEMENTS MICHELIN 1330
          ABB TECHNOLOGY AG 1202
          TETRA LAVAL HOLDINGS & FINANCE S.A. 1195
          CIBA SPECIALTY CHEMICALS HOLDING INC. 1097
          ALSTOM TECHNOLOGY LTD 1047
          ABB SCHWEIZ AG 1019
          SOCIETE DE TECHNOLOGIE MICHELIN 1002
          NOVARTIS PHARMA GMBH 901
          ABB RESEARCH LTD 733
          INVENTIO AG 728
          SIKA TECHNOLOGY AG 700
          HOFFMANN-LA ROCHE INC. 649
          BAXTER INTERNATIONAL INC. 562
          BAXTER HEALTHCARE S.A. 525
          ST-ERICSSON SA 507
          GENENTECH, INC. 506
          INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION 502
          SYNTHES GMBH 497

          I agree the UK has more world class universities but it seems the UK is not that successful in turning academic research into commercial results. A scientist from Imperial College said the research was under pressure there and not in a good way. The Swiss have a better reputation in that respect.

  3. Seems an odd scoring system. Switzerland come nowhere in the Nobel Prizes league, whereas if you count Brits working in the US and discount the silly prizes we come moreorless top with the US with a much smaller population.

    And can mobile app generation really be regarded as creative ? The creative person is the one who thinks up the idea, then has it coded up in a low cost economy like Estonia or Cyprus.

  4. Interesting SEPAM, that explains a lot. Thanks, and thanks for flagging this report up orignally.

  5. SecretEuroPatentAgentMan

    For all the efforts from France and Germany, I think the factors that put the UK on the 4th place make it had to persuade startups to move to France or Germany. Also US VCs find the British legal system more familiar than the continental one so the exits will probably result in a greater pay off in the UK.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*