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The Overall Leaders: Innovation-Capacity Scores

These innovation-capacity scores reveal the nations that possess the strongest foundations for biotechnology. Moreover, the presentations in this section reveal the fundamental capabilities that a country needs to excel in this industry. The category rankings (magenta), for instance, provide a rapid means to assess the balance of IP protection and activity, biotechnology-innovation intensity, enterprise support, educational and workforce strength, and general foundations in each country. The overall innovation scores (orange)—generated from the sums of these category rankings—show the U.S. far ahead of Canada, the closest rival.

Comparing the overall innovation-capacity scores with the performance in the five categories shows that a country can perform strongly in one area, even if it lands at the bottom of the overall ranking. For instance, Italy does not earn a high overall innovation score, but does well in IP protection. On the other hand, even the overall leaders could use improvement in some spots. For example, a collection of countries—including Finland, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Sweden—outstrip the U.S. in general biotechnology foundations. As those details indicate, the breadth and depth of this data set offer many levels of exploration. While you investigate the results, consider this question: Where and how did your country change its biotechnology-innovation capabilities since last year?