US exits Top Ten on the Innovation Index, South Korea Returns to #1

As the 1st place country in the past seven of the nine years of the Bloomberg’s 2021 Innovation index, South Korea retook first place from Germany for 2021. Singapore and Switzerland follow South Korea as 2nd and 3rd countries respectively.  Unfortunately, the U.S. dropped out of Top 10, as Covid 19’s effect showed the shift in innovation moving even further to East Asia and Europe.

Bloomberg has obtained much of the data from Covid 19 crisis, and it is important to show that South Korea, Germany, and Israel (all highly ranked) have been world leaders in fighting the pandemic, especially in areas of contact0tracing or speedy vaccinations. South Korea’s return mostly had to do with increase in patent activity, ranking at the top. South Korea also showed R&D improvement and manufacturing.

Since 2013, however, the US has been seeing a consistent drop. U.S. is now the 11th most innovative country in the world, no longer dominant in science and engineering. U.S. also scored badly in the area of higher education. Biden has promised to invest $300 billion into R&D and breakthrough technologies. China is currently at 16th place.