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Top-5 Talk

Among the top-five countries on the overall innovation index, the U.S., Denmark, Sweden and Canada also took top-five spots in the 2010 index. As in last year’s index, the U.S. earned the overall top spot, although the U.S. only received top scores in two categories, IP and Education/Workforce.

Denmark made the biggest jump among the returnees to the top five—climbing from a three-way tie for fifth (with Finland and Israel) in 2010 to the second place position this year. It made huge jumps in Intensity, moving from 3.01 in 2010 to 7.14 this year. Its Education/Workforce and Foundations scores also went up a little, from 2.32 to 2.55 and 6.80 to 7.20, respectively. Its Enterprise Support score, though, did drop slightly, from 6.10 to 5.92.

Sweden also moved up one spot, and improved its scores on many fronts. Its Enterprise Support, Education/Workforce and Foundations scores increased, respectively, from 6.54, 2.30 and 8.04 in 2010 to 6.62, 2.50 and 8.34 in 2011. Sweden made its biggest jump in Intensity, from 3.03 to 4.20—an increase of nearly 40 percent.

Canada moved from third in 2010 to fourth this year, despite improving in many category scores. It increased its Intensity score from 3.15 to 3.38 from the 2010 to the 2011 index. Its Enterprise Support score also rose from 6.82 to 6.94 from last year to this year. Canada’s score on Education/Workforce increased as well, moving from 3.84 in 2010 to 4.19 in 2011. Canada’s category scores only dropped in Foundations, which shows a minor decrease from 5.76 to 5.70 over the past two years.

In our 2010 edition, Australia scored 24 in overall innovation, which landed it in a tie with Germany and 15 countries scored ahead of it. Although Australia’s score in Enterprise Support stayed about the same and its scores in Education/Workforce and Foundations increased—from 4.01 and 4.98 in 2010, respectively, to 4.95 and 5.36—the real boost came from Intensity, where Australia surged from 1.33 in 2010 to 5.12 in 2011. It’s difficult to imagine what a country could do to demonstrate such an increase—nearly 300 percent—in a single year. In this case, the improvement comes in part from a change that occurred with a data source. Specifically, Nature Biotechnology (see reference above) provides some of the data that makes up the Intensity score, and this publication recently labeled Australia’s CSL as a biotechnology company. This firm would add to most any country’s Intensity measurement. In the second half of 2010, for example, CSL spent $143 million on R&D, reported sales of $2.1 billion—an increase of 7 percent compared to the same period in 2009—and generated $500 million in profits.

As the breakdowns behind the overall innovation scores for these nations show, some volatility lies behind the numbers. Moreover, this analysis indicates areas that could see improvement even in the leading biotechnology countries.