The “Economist Unit Intelligence” announced some days ago that Japan has been the world’s top innovator country during the last year. This conclusion was reached after using many variables, one of the most important parameters for the study is the number of patent applications per inhabitant. I checked the last patent report from WIPO and confirmed they are really patenting a lot! , last year the number of patent applications per million inhabitants was 3.5 times higher than the United States.
Next chart shows the number of patent applications per million inhabitants during the last year:
2 replies on “Japan is the world's top innovator”
And how many of those are yours, hehe? Just kidding.
It’s commendable to see the job the Japanese do on this, but still, after seeing inside a Japanese company how dumb this patenting thing sometimes is, I don’t think it’s 100% a directly indicator of R D going on in the country (ok, maybe 90% of the times there’s a correlation in between).
It’s, though, quite a motivating thing, I must say. Anyway, I wish they did in Spain at least one tenth of what the Japanese do!!
Heh, nice to see Korea up there. Does a great job of perpetuating the stereotype of Koreans/Japanese in terms of intellectual prowess, or at least their willingness to innovate no matter how silly or ridiculous or crazy their innovations can be.