South Korea and Sweden are the most innovative countries in the world | Hacker News Reader

South Korea and Sweden are the most innovative countries in the world

weforum.org

50 pointsstarpilot37 comments

Before we (inevitably) argue from emotion whether or not the ranking tracks our experience, it's useful to understand what metrics Bloomberg (the index cited in the linked WEF article) includes in their definition of innovation. From a 2015 article [1], it seems that innovation to them is defined as follows:

"Bloomberg ranked countries and sovereigns based on their overall ability to innovate and identified the top 50. Six equally weighted metrics were considered and their scores combined to provide an overall score for each country from zero to 100.

1. Research & Development: Research and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP

2. Manufacturing: Manufacturing value-added per capita

3. High-tech companies: Number of domestically domiciled high-tech public companies—such as aerospace and defense, biotechnology, hardware, software, semiconductors, Internet software and services, and renewable energy companies -- as a share of world's total high-tech public companies

4. Postsecondary education: Number of secondary graduates enrolled in postsecondary institutions as a percentage of cohort; percentage of labor force with tertiary degrees; annual science and engineering graduates as a percentage of the labor force and as a percentage of total tertiary graduates

5. Research personnel: Professionals, including Ph.D. students, engaged in R&D per 1 million population

6. Patents: Resident utility patent filings per 1 million population and per $1 million of R&D spent; utility patents granted as a percentage of world total"

It doesn't mean their criteria for innovation is objective or correct, but understanding them will hopefully elevate the discussion from just saying the rankings are garbage -- which it well could be, but is a position arising from emotion and not analysis. (I personally don't think rankings are useful, but the underlying data may be)

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-innovative-countries...

Lots of those feel sort of tainted by the economic and legal situation. Bloomberg totally left out any measure of citation impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_impact

Why aren't I using tons of amazing South Korean and Swedish-designed products in my daily life if this is the case? (or jealous of all the great products they seem to have that I don't have access to?)

Are consumer products a good metric for innovation? (for some conceptions of innovation -- innovation is very vague) Or more for commercialization?

I mean, off the top of my head Samsung is pretty huge and a daily part of life for a lot of people.

Also, folks outside Korea don't generally know this, Samsung is way bigger than just phones, appliances or consumer electronics [1].

It operates businesses in sectors like chipmaking, construction, IT, chemicals, power plants, shipbuilding, etc.

If you've seen a Samsung container ship, or a Samsung-built building (Burj Khalifa, Petronas Towers), you'll have gotten a glimpse at their size and scope.

Their consumer-facing businesses are just the tip of the iceberg.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung

I just got back from a month in Seoul, and was very surprised when I heard that Samsung makes men's suits there. But, come on... Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, Intel, AMD, Amazon, the US list goes on. Also as somebody that has visited both Sweden and South Korea for extended periods, they both are very pro-America and have an appetite for American consumerism and anything American made.

I hear you, but most of the metrics used were normalized (to GDP, R&D $, population, share).

Maybe on a normalized basis the picture looks a little different?

Also, totally unrelated, and I've never been to China, but based on the observations of Connie Chan (of Andreesen-Horowitz), it seems China has a bunch of innovations in the retail space [1] that most Americans aren't aware of. US innovation is still dominant no doubt, but I'm always fascinated by innovations that we don't hear about because it gives us a sense of perspective in the world.

[1] https://a16z.com/2017/02/06/china-trends-2016-2017/

Just a few examples https://sweden.se/business/10-world-shaping-swedish-companie...

Presumably the criteria and outcome are per-capita and per-GDP, otherwise every single ranking would just be of "what countries have the biggest population and the most money", which is not a very useful analysis.

edit; so the ranking is probably more of a "most innovation-oriented economies" [=higher ratio of R&D/IP industries to retail/manufacturing/agro/etc] rather than "countries creating the most innovations"

You probably are, if counting per capita of the country. Sweden has a small population and South Korea medium.

South Korea: Samsung, LG, Hyundai, Kia

Sweden: Spotify, Skype (ish), 4G LTE (via Ericsson), Volvo, some medicines via AstraZeneca (ish).

Also both produce various non-consumer products.

Don't forget IKEA...

And H&M, Minecraft, Battlefield, MySQL, Candy Crush, Absolut Vodka, The Pirate Bay, Husqvarna, the pacemaker, the three-point seatbelt, the zipper, and much more...

(And a lot of music, of course.)

Or Apple's phone screens and memory via Samsung.

Or swedish Pop music!

I hate these articles. Some group decided on a less then meaningful set of criteria to measure how innovative a country is and measures the US outside of the top 10. This is used as the headline.

Then it's reported how a different group picked different criteria and puts the US on rank #2 behind Switzerland.

Overall benefit of this article is less than zero because it wastes people's time. Of course the US is one of if not the most innovative countries in the world. Everyone with eyes can see that.

Butthurt because Murica isn't #1

Seems like it. I upvoted when I read the begining, because I came to discuss the problem with the lack of critical stance towards criteria and metrics used to define how innovative a country is, so I thought it was about that, then I found out it was more about chauvinism :(

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I live here and don’t feel we are really that innovative anymore. What do you think we are innovating at? Silicon Valley crap that no one really cares about or needs? Or worse, actively harms people?

Going to the moon is innovating. Putting scooters everywhere is not innovating. Ignoring climate change is not innovating.

Innovation in some things doesn't seem all that great or useful when you can't even get basic services and infrastructure working properly.

When the BART train can’t even show a display of upcoming stations, I sometimes do wonder if I’m in the world’s hotbed of innovation.

You're just in the wrong location of the country.

I wouldn't say number of patents filed is a good metric for innovation. Patents are more in line with the most bureaucratic and litigious.

I agree software patents are pathological, but patents in other fields seem fine. Most South Korean patents are not software anyway.

There is also a question of what is the better metric. Number of patents may not be the best, but it seems adequate to me.

This seems primarily targeted towards technological innovation.

I'd be curious to see a similar index for sociological innovation. By this, I mean systemic experimentation and progress in social systems.

How would sociological innovation be defined and measured?

That's an interesting question, and one I'm not qualified to answer. That's part of why I asked the first question.

This post is from early 2018. There is already a new annual ranking. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-22/germany-n...

Considering how so many awards and lists and rankings are politically driven rather than based on facts or reality, I'll take this with a grain of salt. Just like the two best universities are now british nonsense according to a british run "Times Higher Education".

I'm sure there are a lot of great innovation going on in south korea and sweden, but there is no way to measure "innovation". Is US patents really a criteria for innovation ( Samsung has the most US patents after IBM according to the article ). And I'm sure the world economic forum doesn't have an agenda either.

The US is not in the top 10. Despite being the country the most people want to come to. It has by far the most unicorns. More than the next three combined. They ding the US for education. Does it really matter when people want to come here?

US never does well in these kinds of rankings lol

It matters for those starting in the US. The US may have excellent universities, but not elementary education.

I feel like the exclusion of the US is the norm in a lot of these rankings just to have that shock factor.

> Despite being the country the most people want to come to

What numbers do you have to back that statement up? Compared with Europe for example?

I am genuinely surprised that so many people were upset enough about the US' exclusion from a top 10 most whatever whatevers article that they felt the need to rant about it in the comments.

US education statistics suck compared to other developed countries. They have for a long time. So why are we surprised by the results of a list that uses education as one of the factors?

I think the reason being that most people here do not share the same definition of what is innovative or not based on the factors weighted by these publications.

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