Ever since the debate with Troy Parfitt, I’ve been interested to discover if there was a way to measure global innovation to learn how China compares to other nations such as the United States, Singapore and Canada.
In fact, there is a way. It’s called The Global Innovation Index 2011. Since 2007, INSEAD eLab has been producing this index, which recognizes the key role of innovation as a driver of economic growth and prosperity.
Through a complex method of gathering data, INSEAD eLab and its global partners compiled the annual results.
China may not be the world’s number one country on this global index, but it is ranked twenty-ninth of the 125 countries on the list and it has a score of 46.43. The lowest rank went to Algeria, which had a score of 19.79. The highest went to Switzerland with a score of 63.82.
By comparison, the United States ranked seventh with a score of 56.57. However, one region of China beat the US and was ranked fourth—Hong Kong (SAR) with a score of 58.8. Canada was ranked eighth and Singapore, with 76.8% of its population Chinese influnced by Confucian values, ranked third.
Global Innovation Index 2011
The Global Innovation Index ranks countries with a complex series of measurements that are described in detail in a fifty-four page pdf document, which may be accessed from the Global Innovation Web site (see link above).
The pillars used for measuring innovation are: Institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, input, scientific outputs, creative outputs, output, and efficiency.
INSEAD has four partners that help compile the data that results in the Global Innovation Index—they are: The World Intellectual Property Organization at the UN (WIPO), Alcatel-Lucent, CII (Construction Industry Institute), and Booz & Company. In addition, INSEAD’s advisory board is comprised of senior representatives from organizations such CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), and ITU.
Why is it important to the global economy to identify countries that have a rich environment for innovation? Professor Dutta says, “Both developed and developing countries realize that innovation is the only way that they can guarantee the competitiveness going forward. It is also important because innovation is important to inspire young people in an economy.”
Continued on January 11, 2012 in Innovation in China – Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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