What Countries Innovate the Most?

When a country has managed to get to a point where it is wealthy enough to start spending money on research and development within a wide variety of fields in science, it starts to innovate in ways that might not have been thought possible before. The World Intellectual Property Organization, an international organization that tries to quantify the amount of innovation each country brings to the world, has released an index that has ranked countries based on the innovativeness of their contributions to the world at large.

While many people would expect the US to be at the very top of the list given how much money that country has along with the general chest thumping manner in which it announces its dominance on the world stage. However, the US comes in at number three. Its Global Innovation Index, which is rated on a scale of 0 to 100, is about 61.73, which is just a hair away from the next two countries on the list which are the Netherlands with a Global Innovation Index of 61.44 as well as the United Kingdom with an index of 61.30.

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The top spot goes to Switzerland however, and this country has quite a significant lead over the US with an index of 67.24, very impressive indeed but not surprising when you consider that one of the biggest centers of research in the world, CERN, is located in Switzerland. Sweden manages to grab second place with an index of 63.65 which has a margin of difference that is much higher than what the US has with the countries ranked fourth and fifth.


Chart source: Statista.

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