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Singapore
Singapore ranked No 3 in global ranking but is only 83rd for innovation efficiency
SINGAPORE - While the Republic has retained third place in an annual index on innovation, it has continued to lag behind in terms of output for its investments in innovation - or in other words, its innovation efficiency.
The Global Innovation Index (GII), released yesterday, ranked 141 countries across seven categories: Institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs, and creative outputs. The index is published by INSEAD eLab, a research centre at the international business school, and the World Intellectual Property Organization.
According to INSEAD, Singapore's position as Asia's most innovative country was due to strong showings across the board, coming in first in innovative inputs, human capital research and business sophistication.
"Its innovation capabilities rank first in the world, with a well-trained student body, a robust research community, a skilled labor force, sophisticated financial and commercial markets and a business community proactive in adopting the latest technologies," the GII report said.
In the area of innovation efficiency, however, Singapore was ranked 83rd. It was 94th last year. This was partly due to a weaker showing in creative outputs, where Singapore was ranked 37th, falling by seven places from last year.
This category measures creativity as part of innovative output, taking into account statistics (such as trademark registrations by residents), creative goods and services (such as national feature films and creative goods exports) and online creativity (such as video uploads on YouTube and monthly edits on Wikipedia).
INSEAD eLab Associate Director (Asia-Pacific) Nina Laven said that innovation output has been "in the past a weaker area for Singapore". She added: "Creative outputs is still a weakness. I think that moving forward, continued and planned strategic investments in creative clusters by the Singapore Government may raise that ranking."
This year, however, in the category of knowledge and technology output, Singapore has moved up from 15th to third, she noted. INSEAD attributed this rise to the impact of innovation activities at the macro-economic level. There were "clear improvements" in the growth rate of labour productivity and in foreign direct investment net outflows, INSEAD said.
Top 10 leaders in the Global Innovation Index
Switzerland
Sweden
Singapore
Finland
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Denmark
Hong Kong (China)
Ireland
United States of America
Today
04 July 2012
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