
The U.S. drops out of the top 10 in innovation ranking - swiftting
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/south-korea-tops-global-innovation-ranking-again-as-u-s-falls
======
tlb
What drags the US down most in these rankings is "tertiary efficiency":
roughly the fraction of people in grad school or with graduate degrees.

Ranking countries is a dodgy business, even more than ranking colleges. A
different set of weights or ways of measuring things could give you totally
different answers.

If you're looking for a way to claim the rankings are biased, you might argue
that this up-ranks countries that value credentials over actual innovation. Or
you might claim that these days, an undergrad education is enough to go out in
the world and innovate and that countries that send more students through grad
school are wasting their time. Or you might claim that the US is a developed
country with a developing country attached, which drags down the averages. And
probably California, NY, MA and a few other states considered independently
would rank highly.

~~~
electrograv
When casual readers see results titled "Bloomberg Innovation Index" (myself
included, a while ago), there's a tendency due to brand reputation
(Bloomberg!) to believe that this is some scientifically and statistically
rigorous analysis of a well-defined "innovation" that can be trusted. This is
dangerous, and IMO disappointing (I know, I was naive and optimistic)
regarding the statistical credibility of many "reputable" sources.

In reality (as you describe), these are completely arbitrary human-designed
heuristic scores with most likely no statistical significance.

I really wish we could qualify these "rankings" with a more honest term ,
like:

 _" statistically useless, arbitrarily rated average of multiple human
designed score scales, meant to loosely relate to some quality we want to
measure, but in reality is more a game of politics and adversarial score
optimization."_

But that doesn't have the same 'ring' to it as "top country rankings in
innovation".

~~~
didibus
It sounds a little like denial. I mean, Bloomberg does a great job, its pretty
simple: "The 2018 ranking process began with more than 200 economies. Each was
scored on a 0-100 scale based on seven equally weighted categories. Nations
that didn’t report data for at least six categories were eliminated".

So its an equally weighted average of 7 categories. The data was reported by
the nations themselves.

Now the key takeaway is that the US _dropped out_ of the top 10.
Comparatively, you can tell something is changing in the US causing a drop.

Metrics are just indicator, and can sometimes misrepresent the reality, but
more often, there's truth in the metrics also. Its hard to say what the impact
of this innovation score is, is it economic, or is it social, but clearly the
score change is due to real realities changing.

~~~
muninn_
Sorry but not buying it. The selection of even 7 categories, let alone
suggesting that such categories should be equally weighted is unreliable at
best. The nations self-reporting the data is completely irrelevant and, again,
at best unreliable.

Now, maybe the US isn't as innovative as Sweden is. Ok. What exactly does that
mean? Why do I care if the percentage of graduate educated people is higher?
How does that actually affect innovation? Are those people releasing new,
globally-changing products and services? What are some examples?

What does it mean if Samsung has more US patents than any other company
besides IBM? Is IBM more innovative than Google?

It's fun and popular to bash the U.S. (has been for some time) but I really
don't see much meaning behind these rankings. It's not an in-depth study.
Amazon has more criteria for picking a HQ. Do you really think Bloomberg can
look at these '7 criteria' and come up with a meaningful estimation? No.

~~~
watwut
> Now, maybe the US isn't as innovative as Sweden is. Ok. What exactly does
> that mean?

It means exactly the same thing it meant when US was among top. There were
people who were interested in it and sometimes happy about it. Those very same
people are still interested, but this time wonder whether it means something
is changing for worst.

~~~
muninn_
So it was meaningless still. There’s nothing to be interest about here unless
unfounded clickbait is a hobby.

------
martinshen
Honestly a lot of these "global" rating systems are ridiculous. The US easily
produces the most innovation globally.

This is similar to ranking systems that consider McGill the Harvard of Canada
or consider Babson College the #1 for Entrepreneurship.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> The US easily produces the most innovation globally_

As would be expected given the size of the US population. The only two more
populous countries are both developing nations. But a ranking that didn't
normalise over the size of the population would make even less sense than this
one.

~~~
virmundi
The EU is a confederation. They need to be considered as a block now. Don't
look at Germany. Look at the EU.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
True, the EU is a confederation. Also true: it's _not a country_.

What's a country? Well, it has a single currency. The EU does... almost.

A country has a border that it controls. The EU does... more or less.

A country has a military. The EU absolutely does not.

And a country thinks of itself as a country. The EU does not. I suspect that
this last reason is why the media doesn't report on the EU as if it were a
single country.

~~~
virmundi
The US didn't think of itself as a country until after the civil war. Even
once the Federal government took power, individuals aligned more with their
state than their State.

As to the EU having a military? They're getting there with the US finally
starting to get tired of defending the region with little respect.
[https://www.wikitribune.com/story/2017/11/15/european_union/...](https://www.wikitribune.com/story/2017/11/15/european_union/eu-
to-increase-its-defense-budget-as-23-member-states-sign-a-commitment/20544/)

------
ryandrake
The discussion so far reminds me a little of whenever a "Top N school
rankings" report comes out. People who go (or went) to any of the top-ranked
schools will use it to argue that their schools are better, and people who go
to the lower-ranked schools will downplay the results, nit-pick the
methodology, point out that the top N are all within a small margin of error,
etc. A little tribalism?

~~~
notyourwork
Being from the US I think we deserve to be off this list.

We aren’t making America great nor are we doing anything to better the world
or our own people. We emphasize the wrong attributes of success which.

~~~
WillReplyfFood
If one wants to improve something, one nees a little self-sadism, the wish to
shine a light on the ugly spots until things improve.

------
virmundi
Is the metric for most stem masters or phds useful? The Soviet Union use to
produce many such people but never achieved much.

~~~
dvdhnt
I disagree.

Some of the Soviet scientists who won a Nobel Prize in science [1]:

\- 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank and Igor Tamm "for the discovery and
interpretation of the Cherenkov effect"

\- 1962 Lev Landau "for his theories about condensed matter, particularly
about liquid helium superfluidity"

\- 1964 Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the
area of the quantum electronics, which led to the construction of oscillators
and amplifiers on the basis of the maser laser principle"

Additionally, some of the other areas where Soviets contributed to research
and innovation include [2]:

\- stem cells

\- light emitting diodes

\- electric rocket motor

\- blood bank

\- paratrooping

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_in_the_Soviet_Union)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Russian_innovation#_Soviet_Union)

edit: formatting

~~~
cryptonector
But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it failed
to overcome the downsides of communism. That's the point.

You can have lots of people with post-grad credentials whose creativity is not
fully utilized. Or who don't really have the requisite creativity in spite of
their credentials. The USSR may have had quality and quantity in spades (maybe
it really did!) but their economic structure wasted that advantage.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But the USSR failed anyways, and it failed to innovate enough before it
> failed to overcome the downsides of communism.

You mean “the downside of starting off as a poorly-developed state engaged in
a multi-generation combination of outright war and proxy wars and military
spending races with the most advanced countries in the world”.

~~~
cryptonector
No. A number of successful countries started off "as a poorly-developed state
engaged in outright war and proxy wars". The U.S. itself, for example. And
Israel, for another. Stop making excuses.

And, as if the arms race of the Cold War did not involve choices made by the
Soviets! Come off it. They could easily have chosen not to get dragged into an
arms race. But instead they chose no only to play that game, but to then start
quite a few expensive proxy wars... Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, a number of
civil wars in Africa, Nicaragua, ... These were _their_ choices.

~~~
FRex
So? The original point being disputed was that SU and Soviet people "never
achieved much" which is not true in many areas, one of which is becoming a
militarily powerful country able to engage in a stand off with USA while 100
years ago Poland beat Soviet Russia in a war a year after gaining its own
independence.

Saying that "they are stupid because they were still communists" or that other
countries were successful is moving the goal post.

Israel was a very special situation due to UN, Holocaust, ties to the West,
etc. and USA is on outright easy mode in comparison because of their remote
placement, size and abundance of everything and it has had tons of quiet time
to develop and attracted the brightest people from the world for a while to
come to live and work there. I'd say Japan or Prussia or Singapore were better
sudden (under 100 years) success stories.

~~~
cryptonector
They did not achieve much in comparison to the rest of the world. Come on,
it's _obvious_ :

    
    
         - a non-hungry society?  NO
         - wealthy society?  certainly not
         - advanced and commercially successful airliners?  no (but you'll pick a nit here, I'm sure)
         - advanced medicine?  no (cue BS about how wonderful medicine is in Cuba, but still no)
         - advanced computing devices?  no, certainly nothing like those available in the West by 1991, much less anything since
         - the Internet?  NO
         - putting a man on the moon?  (hardly important, but) no
         - a myriad of consumer products of varying technological content, from the trivial to the highly advanced?  NO, see the first item
         - how about... cars... anti-lock brakes, catalytic converters, airbags...?  no
    

I could go on. But really, no, the USSR did not come close to the U.S. as to
innovation, not because the USSR lacked talented people (it had them in
spades) or a decent tech education system (it had a very good tech education
system), but because its economic system could not make the best of those
resources. It's that simple.

~~~
toomanybeersies
It's easy to make exclusive lists to try and make one country or another look
better.

And who is the rest of the world? The USSR achieved a lot in comparison to
Africa, South America, the Middle East, and SE Asia.

~~~
cryptonector
If you consider the gulag an achievement, sure!

I would definitely NOT say that the USSR achieved more than Latin America.
People in much of LatAm are happy and reasonably free -- _very_ free by
comparison to the USSR. But I guess you wouldn't consider freedom an
achievement -- too easy, perhaps? or maybe not to your liking?

~~~
toomanybeersies
Argentina was throwing dissidents out of planes into the Atlantic ocean in the
1980's. Chile had Pinochet. Colombia only just recently signed a peace treaty
with FARC, drawing down a 50 year conflict that has killed >200,000 people.
Guatemala had an almost 40 year civil war. El Salvador had a 12 year civil
war. I could go on...

One thing that a lot of these conflicts and situations had in common is that
the USA covertly overthrew a democratically elected, socialist leaning
government using the CIA. Thousands of people were killed due to the meddling
of the USA and the CIA.

~~~
cryptonector
Yes, Latin America had dark times, but before, and after, it's been rather OK
-- certainly fantastic by comparison to the USSR. There are no gulags in Chile
or Argentina, or Brazil, or... And Chile is doing very well -- they're the
tiger of LatAm. Colombia has finally beaten back the guerillas and is doing
rather well considering. And Venezuela? Yeah, not well, not Venezuela --
wonder why /s

------
blahman2
Many of the comments here show why critical thinking is a useful skill esp
with articles such as this one, but given how much volume there is nowadays,
and the fact that we are not all subject matter experts, it becomes a bit
cumbersome.

I wish these articles had a "Ways in which our claim could be wrong" section.
Maybe every article should. E.g. Here is what i think, but here are aspects of
it that I haven't looked into that could make me change my stance.

At the very least, you'd know the author made some effort to be truthful, and
not just sensationalist/misled.

Perhaps we can have a browser extension that aggregates and ranks crowdsourced
feedback on articles such as this one? :P

~~~
guitarbill
It's also worth keeping in mind who this data/report for. Bloomberg has a
specific audience, who love distilled information - that is doesn't capture
the whole picture is a given, but who really has the time to do research
themselves? That's why you pay Bloomberg.

But now with the internet, any rando can read this stuff and obsess over it.

------
banachtarski
> South Korea remained the global-innovation gold medalist for the fifth
> consecutive year. Samsung Electronics Co., the nation’s most-valuable
> company by market capitalization, has received more U.S. patents in the
> 2000s than any firm except International Business Machines Corp.

OK this is hilariously misguided as a metric. Also, I have some familiarity
with the SK tech industry. They're catching up to US standards and hold
themselves back by prioritizing the old-school mechanisms for upward movement
which hinge on seniority/age and pedigree.

------
nkoren
Every time I see a ranking like this, I think: _wow, what a crap ranking._

Innovation has relatively little to do with nation-states. It has quite a lot
to do with city-regions, however: those, much more than nation-states, are
what produce the social and economic dynamism that fuels innovation.

What the Bloomberg and other similar metrics do is take real indicators of
innovation and then averages them across randomly-sized buckets, making it
genuinely useless for comparative purposes. Singapore fares very well because
it's a city-state. China fares very poorly because it has three-quarters of a
billion people who aren't doing anything particularly from an innovation
perspective. America has the same "problem" on a smaller scale. But innovative
places like Shenzhen or the SF Bay Area can approach Singaporean levels of
innovation, while China and America's innovation output as a whole certainly
outdo Singapore's.

So this ranking is showing neither the total innovation output of a country,
nor the "innovation density" of places where innovators actually congregate.
So what _is_ it showing? Basically nothing.

(This is not to dispute the thesis that America, as a whole, is having
national-scale problems with how it fosters innovation. Personally I agree
with that, but would not use this garbage metric to try to support that
thesis.)

~~~
purplethinking
This deserves to be on top. Cities and metropolitan regions are what is
driving innovation and the economy.

------
CodeSheikh
Part of the problem, money is flowing more towards sinks like "Social
Influencers", "V-loggers" and other similar jobs. Younger generation is
focusing more on instant fame/money/reward/acknowledgement than investing in
long term initiatives like pursuing STEM based programs. Sadly we live in a
time where a 15 year old is making more money posting his/her pictures than
someone holding a Phd. Forget about academia jobs there are no more jobs in
post-docs positions in USA anymore.

~~~
balthasar
The entertainment industry has always had pop culture icons making more than
skilled-professionals. Are you getting social media confused with companies
who innovate just because they both use computers?

~~~
CodeSheikh
Agree that people in entertainment always making more money than skilled-
professionals. But my point is that younger demographic is heavily influenced
by current social-media-preneurs rater than STEM achievers.

~~~
leereeves
That's nothing new. Sports, acting, and music attracted a huge fraction of
young Baby Boomers and GenXers.

------
cromwellian
Is # of patent applications really a criteria in innovation? Seems to value
quantity over quality.

~~~
FilterSweep
Well, that also creates a further negative effect toward the "Patent Troll"
system prevalent in the US.[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll)

------
rayiner
An "innovation" ranking that doesn't have the U.S. in the top 10 is like a
ranking of U.S. universities that doesn't have Harvard or Stanford in the top
10. It says more about the ranking methodology than what is being ranked.

~~~
adventured
Wait, you don't think Finland produces radically more innovation than the US?

I mean comeon, everything about CRISPR, AI, VR/AR, automation, mobile
software, Internet software, Internet services, media technology, space tech,
biotech, military tech, video gaming, it's all pouring out of Finland at a far
higher rate than the US.

I'll say that Finland is very obviously a wonderful country on most metrics.
No question about that at all. They aren't even remotely in the same league as
the US on innovation or invention. It's the same exact bullshit you run into
when people compare Sweden vs the US, it makes no sense on scale. For the same
reason, comparing Finland to the US on innovation, is an absurdity, a nation
of 5 million vs a nation of 330 million. You could compare Massachusetts to
Finland perhaps, or Sweden. The US should be compared against larger entities
(EU, Eurozone, Germany, France, China, Japan, Russia, etc.), or otherwise
assessed at the state level of elite outcomes vs small nation elite outcomes.
There's just as large of a gap between Massachusetts and Louisiana, as there
is Sweden and Romania.

------
theother
Just to be clear: yes, most rankings are BS all the way, but thinking about
what role the US (or any country, really) plays in
innovation/education/economy/$thing seems worthwhile?

Still, is it just me, or are the most posts here reflex-like defenses of the
US?

What would you suggest instead? It would have to yield actionable results,
mind you...

------
yangtheman
_“One common trait of the U.S., Korea and China is that people accept failure
as part of the process,”_

I don't think that's true about Korea, and it is the core reason for the lack
of vibrant startups in Korea.

------
hartator
I don't fully understand why with the best universities and the best startups,
the U.S. is not number one. Of course, it's a big country with not only tech
companies in the economy, that seems counterintuitive to include this in the
calculation though.

------
nofilter
I'm quite sure this goes in hand with the poor education that the U.S
provides.

------
johan_larson
When we talk about Big Tech, meaning the dominant high-tech companies, we mean
Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft. They are the ones doing things
that affect our lives, which is what we actually care about. All five are
headquartered in the US. That means the US is tops in the sort of innovation
that we actually care about. Any "Innovation Index" that doesn't place the US
at or very close to the top is not a useful proxy for impactful innovation.

------
creaghpatr
I mean, sure, it's feasible that Israel unseated the US at no. 10, but also
the US gives Israel tens of billions of dollars in support.

~~~
dba7dba
Don't other nations also receive much aid from US but score low in this
ranking?

~~~
creaghpatr
Yeah but most other nations receive hundreds of millions of dollars and it's
mostly africa and middle eastern countries. US is planning to spend 1.3
trillion in Israel in FY18, although I imagine most of that is military.

No denying Israel is a leader in innovation because they absolutely are, but
the headline seems to imply that they unseated the US, which is kind of
misleading.

[https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore](https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore)

~~~
fishcolorbrick
>US is planning to spend 1.3 trillion in Israel in FY18

That isn't what your source says... where'd you get that number?

[0]:
[https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore/country/Israel](https://www.foreignassistance.gov/explore/country/Israel)

~~~
creaghpatr
On the homepage when you hover over, but say it's $3.1B (the number doesn't
really matter because it's impossible to gauge how much goes to military
spending)

>U.S. assistance helps ensure that Israel maintains its Qualitative Military
Edge (QME) over potential regional threats, preventing a shift in the security
balance of the region and safeguarding U.S. interests.

My argument here is that the US is outsourcing innovation to countries like
Israel rather than investing in it domestically. This likely serves to kill 2
birds with one stone but it makes it weird to index the 2 countries against
each other.

~~~
Adverblessly
> "it's impossible to gauge how much goes to military spending"

It is easy to gauge how much goes to military spending. Practically all of it
if we go by previous years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif)

And of that military spending, IIRC >=50% is only allowed to be spent on
purchasing from US companies (i.e. driving US military innovation) and IIUC
from 2019 onwards that percentage will go up to 100%, so it will primarily
drive US military innovation (and at the same time discourage Israeli military
innovation, since the Israeli government will be less likely to spend money on
local military products)

------
seoguru
Reminds me of this interview of Mariana Mazzucato on "The green innovation
race" which I revisited in light of the new tariffs on solar panels:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygM6nJFXa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygM6nJFXa0)

Bad ideology is dragging us down.

