South Korea, Singapore and Switzerland have been ranked as the three top innovative countries in Bloomberg’s innovation index for 2021. Korea took the top spot from Germany, which dropped to fourth place. The Asian nation has now topped the index for seven of the nine years that it’s been published. Singapore and Switzerland each moved up one spot to rank second and third. The US has dropped out of the top ten list.

Although much of the Bloomberg data was collected before the covid crisis, it is still notable that many countries that ranked high on the index –- like Korea, Germany and Israel –- have also been world leaders in some areas of fighting the pandemic, whether it’s contact-tracing or speedy vaccinations.

American names like Zoom Video Communications Inc. or vaccine maker Pfizer Inc. are among past year’s emblems of innovation, reflecting the top-ranking position of the US in density of high-tech firms. The pandemic has also spotlighted a different kind of breakthrough, one that has more to do with policy and organization than technology or research, according to Nobel prizewinning economist Paul Romer.

World’s most innovative Economies

Source: Bloomberg

>> Read more here.