There is all the time a contest for probably the most technologically advanced country, and Global Finance has updated the country’s technical strength rankings based on a special set of integrated indicators. The two primary indicators of technological accessibility are Internet usage as a percentage of the full population and LTE usage as a percentage of the full population.
The third measure is the IMD World Competitiveness Center’s digital competitiveness index. This result was a mixture of elements akin to technical knowledge, readiness to develop latest technologies and the power to develop and improve innovations.
A final indicator of how vital technological progress is to a specific government is the share of GDP that a rustic spends on research and development.
Combining these variables to acquire a rating of a rustic’s technological prowess yields some intriguing conclusions. First, Israel rose to tenth place, overtaking larger or more industrialized countries akin to Singapore, Germany, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong.
Israel lags behind all other countries by way of smartphone adoption, and web usage amongst Israelis just isn’t very high.
Another fascinating finding is that resource-dependent countries do well by way of Internet use, but poorly overall. According to comparable countries with lower GDP per capita and lower Internet use, the United Arab Emirates (18), Qatar (25), Saudi Arabia (40) and Russia (44) fare quite poorly.
The reasons are many, but they support the thought of the “resource curse”: nations whose economies are heavily depending on the export of natural resources lack innovation and progress.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have low levels of innovation and devote only a modest portion of their GDP to research and development, although almost 100% of their inhabitants use the Internet. As a result, these countries find themselves in a difficult situation since the scope for progress on this particular statistic is restricted, on condition that just about all of their residents are online.
Meanwhile, countries with dynamic, multi-faceted economies akin to Denmark (3), Japan (7) and Germany (13) that invest heavily in research and development are in a greater position to profit.
An interesting fact about this 12 months’s rating is that great economic development, not necessarily technological progress, is a standard think about countries with high Internet use. A high percentage of individuals use the Internet in countries akin to the United Arab Emirates (18), Qatar (25), Iceland (20) and Luxembourg (24).
According to the IMD Global Competitiveness Center, all of those countries perform worse by way of digital competitiveness, LTE penetration and R&D spending than the worldwide average. Compared to technological progress, GDP per capita appears to be more closely related to Internet use as a percentage of the population. Making the web accessible to most people is crucial, but supporting creativity is equally vital.
As usual, the highest places within the rankings were dominated by countries from East Asia and Europe. Ten of the highest 20 countries were in Europe and five were in East Asia, demonstrating the importance of regional competition within the fight for technical development.
However, attention needs to be paid to differences in results across Europe. Eastern European countries akin to Hungary (36) and Poland (35) are at the underside of the highest ten, while Nordic countries akin to Denmark (3) and Sweden (5) dominate the highest ten.
At the middle are the nations of Western and Central Europe. The future direction of this significant divergence in Europe remains to be uncertain.
Source: GFMag.com
