
The World’s Most Innovative Economies - pbhowmic
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-17/sweden-gains-south-korea-reigns-as-world-s-most-innovative-economies
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OskarS
>The Swedes themselves promote an atmosphere of great personal ambition —
unlike some European neighbors that emphasize the collective — and that’s a
boon to innovation, he said.

>“In the culture, people are super individualistic — this means that people
have ideas and are very interested in pursuing them in this way in order to
become wealthy,” said Henrekson.

This is very true, and a thing which is often misunderstood about the Swedish
mindset. The sterotype of Swedes is frequently that we're a bunch of
socialists who all believe that everyone should work for the collective good.
That's totally wrong.

Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic countries in the world: we
value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that
everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances of
their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it is a
substitute for family and community and other more traditional support
systems.

~~~
kzrdude
> Sweden is perhaps one of the most individualistic country in the world: we
> value the individual over the family or community, and we believe that
> everyone should have the same opportunities regardless of the circumstances
> of their birth. This is the reason we have the social safety net we have: it
> is a substitute for family and community and other more traditional support
> systems.

I think this has its costs; humans are social and they need the social
context. The state certainly can't deliver a social context on a limited
budget care & support machine. (Example: Your grandmother will meet 100
different caregivers for home care in a year, if she has that. That's 100
strangers instead of having a personal relation.

That can be solved either with a more expensive consistent employment regime
in elderly care, or care from family.)

~~~
OskarS
Oh, yes, I totally agree! There's a very steep cost to this model of "Swedish-
style individualism", and it's exactly the one you describe. Swedes have much
weaker bonds to their extended family, their community, their religious
institutions (etc.) and it's clearly not a good thing. Humans are social
animals.

I'm not necessarily arguing that Sweden is a model society and all other
countries should adopt our ways. What I'm arguing against is the idea (fairly
common, at least in the US) that higher taxes and a more generous welfare
state is always antithetical to individualism and the entrepreneurial spirit.
It can be, certainly, but it is not necessarily so.

~~~
PastaMonster
Read somewhere that the chance of having higher intelligence is reflected in
how self-sufficient you are. People with higher intelligence tend to manage
just fine with a small social group with weak connections. The more social you
are the more likely that you have lower intelligence.

Sort of suggests that following the collective, being an ant in a colony may
have negative effects on intelligence over a few generations. Natures law:
"What you don't use you lose." You don't need higher intelligence because so
many are chipping in to compensate.

Then again, balance is a fickle thing.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Except its because the collective has given smart people these entitlements.
"Hey this guys pretty smart, lets give him tenure." Did you personally pay the
taxes to run that university? Did you make those policies? How much of an
island do you think 'smart' people really are?

Or "Hey this guy is pretty good at business, lets give him low taxes to reward
him and keep him happy."

I think its difficult for successful people to see how much they're lifted up
by everyday people in society doing their best to incentivize meritocracy and
creating an even playing field where the smart people can succeed.

Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up
until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least
come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having
powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the
inquisition.

Also when we look at many of the enlightenment thinkers and supporters, we see
a slew of milquetoast intellects and ordinary people fighting against the old
order of theocracies, monarchs, and dictators. Why did the smart need them to
build the society they needed to succeed in? Newton wasn't writing about the
freedom of man, instead he was obsessed over his place in the kingdom of
heaven and went a bit mad about non-violent coin counterfeiters, advocating
for their death, and often delivering it using the power of his position in
the mint.

I think there's an Ayn Rand sized fallacy hole that you're falling into here.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Lets remember, the idea of the meritorious succeeding is rare in society. Up
until recently you had to be a non-woman, non-slave, and at the very least
come from a wealthy or political family. Or perhaps sidestep this by having
powerful political patrons but then still be under the gun of, say, the
inquisition.

In most historical human societies, the way to "succeed" was to threaten to
kill other people unless they gave you what you wanted.

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kartan
> Fresh ideas tend to pay off big in Sweden, even as the current government is
> less business-friendly and has imposed labor taxes that could crimp business
> investment

Maybe it is that high taxes and citizen friendly social system the responsible
for the success of the country. I moved to Sweden to work in the tech sector
because I like how socially advanced is the country.

Taxes are used to invest in society, and that's how you get a competitive
environment. If you don't invest in your citizens how do you expect to grow? I
really proud of paying taxes in Sweden and help society with my fair share of
the cost. :)

~~~
brotherjerky
I think Americans tend to over-estimate the tax rate in Europe.

California's top marginal rate (including state and payroll taxes) comes out
to about 47%. It looks like Sweden tops out at 56%. But for that extra 9%, you
get lots of services (health care, education, etc). I'd guess most Americans
would take the tax hike to not worry about insurance, school loans, etc.

~~~
refurb
Marginal tax rates mean nothing unless you know what the actual income
brackets are.

The US's hughest tax brackets kick in at almost $400K. If Sweden's kicks in at
$100K, the tax burden is MuCH higher.

~~~
brotherjerky
Looks like top tax bracket in Sweden is $90k -- at $90k, CA marginal is 42%.
So a delta of 14% -- still probably worth it, especially at lower incomes
where student loans and health care a higher percentage of earnings.

~~~
cmdrfred
The question for me is if our government doesn't provide any of those services
why aren't we paying half that number?

~~~
brotherjerky
Well, you can look at the numbers here:
[http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/...](http://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/styles/report_371px/public/atoms/files/3-4-16bud-
policybasics_2.png?itok=fqita01H)

    
    
        Medicare, Medicaid, etc: 25%
        Social Security: 24%
        Military: 16%
        Safety Net Programs: 10%
        Federal / Veteran Benefits: 8%
    

Looks like some people get services, just not everyone.

At the state level, California:
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spendin...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/California_state_spending_pie_chart)

    
    
        Health Care 35%
        Pensions 18%
        Education 16%
        Welfare 9%
        Protection (?) 7%
    

The US does not seem to get a great return on healthcare spending.

~~~
cmdrfred
So then the question is are our elected officials corrupt or incompetent?

~~~
Symmetry
The biggest problem is that the electorate doesn't trust the elected officials
in this matter. To bring down healthcare costs you need to be able to reject
treatments that are much more expensive but only provide slight benefits.
Organizations like the NHS in Britain are very good at this. But whenever
someone gestures in that direction in the US you have people up in arms about
"death panels" and the idea is quickly dropped.

I don't know though. Maybe if politicians just came out and said "This
proposal will produce 10 extra deaths per year but we'll be saving $50bn so we
think it's worth it" then people would be willing to embrace that.

~~~
cmdrfred
I don't even think you are talking about more net deaths. Every percentage
point you raise taxes or healthcare costs pushes a group of people underwater.
A certain percent of people who have bankruptcies will commit suicide/beat
their wife to death/yell at their children until they develop mental issues
etc. Economic policies have consciences that are diffcult to measure.

------
nkoren
I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

It's got China wedged between Canada and Poland. On the one hand, on _average_
this is probably correct: there are vast swathes of inland China that are
undoubtedly quite stultifying and wouldn't rank highly on any "innovation"
metric. On the hand, if you're interested in this kind of innovation, then
what does rural China have to do with anything? The innovations happening in
Shanghai and Beijing and Shenzhen and Chengdu are _very_ innovative indeed,
and ought to rank near the top of any global list. Certainly much higher than
anything you could find in Poland or Canada (meaning no disrespect).

I'd suggest that it's problematic for a ranking like this to even be based on
countries. Countries, per se, don't produce innovation: urban economies do. A
ranking of innovative _cities_ would be a much more interesting and realistic
metric.

~~~
jackcosgrove
> I wonder: what's the point of a ranking like this?

To drive mouse clicks by stoking nationalist sentiment and feelings of
superiority.

> A ranking of innovative cities would be a much more interesting and
> realistic metric.

I agree. The chauvinism would still be present and is inevitable when making
comparisons between locales, but at least the locales would make sense as
economic units.

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demonshalo
This makes 0 sense to my heavily biased brain. As a Swede that is keeping a
close eye on the domestic market, I can't find that many "innovations" taking
place in most commercial sectors. R&D means quack-all if you cant translate
that research into good and services that the citizens of said country can
take advantage of.

~~~
kalleboo
Everything is relative. How many other countries had systems like BankID,
Swish, doing their taxes online as well as with Skatteverket, etc etc when
those came out? how many of those countries have populations smaller than
Sweden? How much innovation comes out of Ohio which has a larger population?

~~~
big_youth
It was not recent but a century ago Ohio came up with chewing gum, light
bulbs, the first gas powered auto, flight, the, the first vacuum, and founded
the first coed and interracial college.

A little more innovate than online banking stuff.

[https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/technological-
innovation...](https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/technological-innovations-
origanating-in-ohio)

~~~
kalleboo
I didn't mean to start some kind of innovational penis-waving contest. Just
trying to show that it's easy to be blind to local innovation when it's around
you. I'm not saying that no innovation is coming out of Ohio. I'm saying that
the parent poster "as a Swede" probably doesn't see any innovation that comes
out of Ohio. Just like an American doesn't see any innovation coming out of
Sweden. Hence the "everyday" kind of examples.

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maruhan2
Density in a country-wide scale means little in terms of technology. LIke how
much more farmland and wildlife does USA have over Korea? Quite a huge amount.
The comparison should really come at a similar scale. SF vs Seoul would be a
better comparison.

------
kidsil
Could the ranking of a country like Switzerland be heavily impacted by
Pharmaceutical companies registered there and filling patents there?

How many of those innovations are actually tangible in each of those countries
and how many are just technicalities?

Not to discredit the ranking, I'm actually curious about the balance.

------
xiaoma
And as happens all too often with these lists, they left out one of the top
economies and one that would have made its top bracket—Taiwan.

------
noxin
Interesting, the global competitiveness report of the WEF lists South Korea as
rank 20 for innovation.

[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGl...](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GCR2016-2017/05FullReport/TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2016-2017_FINAL.pdf)
[PDF] page 50

~~~
ch4ck
The good thing about rankings is that you have many to choose from.

~~~
wott
Yes, there is always at least one where each city/country can claim the first
place, so that local newspapers can make an article about how that piece of
land is better than others and local political leaders can show that they
achieved something.

------
digi_owl
Why to i get the impression that this has less to do with out and out
innovation and more to do with the startup circus?

------
kriro
I wonder how they measure patent activity given the vastly different patent
systems. Software patents being the most obvious example. Is a country
penalized for being "less active" if there are no software patents in that
country (the explanation in the footnotes has me believe the answer would be
yes)?

I'm also skeptical of the weights that were used (equal weights). My instinct
(as a non-US citizen) would be that the #1 spot in high tech of the US is
worth a lot more than other categories (and the gap to #2 is probably also
substantial). I'm fairly surprised that the U.S. is only #10 in R&D intensity.

I'd like to see some correlation to some education rankings (+imported
workers) as well, could be interesting.

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joelthelion
> South Korea remained the big winner, topping the international charts in R&D
> intensity, value-added manufacturing and patent activity and with top-five
> rankings in high-tech density, higher education and researcher concentration

None of these are really all that relevant to true innovation. As a European,
it's clear to me that no country comes even close to the US in terms of
innovation. Almost all really new technologies come out of the US.

~~~
galfarragem
_> Almost all really new technologies come out of the US._

I would add: Almost all really new technologies _in the market_ come out of
the US.

US is the best at transforming research in $.

~~~
JotForm
This seems like the true approach.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
And arguably, the more valuable one. Bringing something to the masses

a) which used to be expensive but is now cheap or

b) which is new but affordable for most

is what changes people's lives.

------
dba7dba
Looking at the ranking, I am flabbergasted South Korea is picked #1. South
Korea getting picked even in top 20 would've been shocking. But #1?

Let's consider some of the odds that were in the way.

1\. no modern education or social institutions were in South Korea until early
1900s. The Korean peninsula of 1900 was little different from 500 years ago,
when the Chosun Dynasty was formed.

2\. What little gain made during the Japanese occupation (1910-1945) was razed
during the Korean War.

3\. the country faced a massive refugee crisis during the Korean War. Granted
Syrian and other current refugee crises are tragic, but the Korean refugee
crisis was just as bad, if not worse. Cold winter than can freeze you to
death. No overland escape route for South Koreans.

4\. no natural resources like oil to sell

5\. massive military expenditure commitment, including 2-3 year military
service every young male has to go through.

And yet they kept at it and moved up the list.

------
woodandsteel
The article says Russia was 26th this year, down from 12th last.

I am very surprised it was so high before. There is a ton of innovation going
on in recent years, like renewable energy, AI, nanotechnology, and so on, but
almost none of it seems to be coming out of Russia. Certainly not what you
would expect from a large industrialized nation with an educated public.

------
novaleaf
French Guiana is colored around 15th place in the map, but isn't listed at all
in the top 50 list.

I wonder what happened there.

~~~
Symmetry
It's part of France and so it would make sense to give it the same color as
the rest of France. But on the other hand the don't color Greenland as part of
Denmark, so who knows.

------
kahrkunne
South Korea just steals and takes credit for everything Japan makes.

They're like China, but they get away with it better.

~~~
dba7dba
Japan is also infamous or famous for stealing ideas from the West and then put
their spin on it and improve upon it.

