La noticia destacada por Puigcevert:
Japan is the world's most innovative nation, according to a recent study by the business information arm of the Economist magazine.La noticia publicada en EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit):
Defining innovation as "the application of knowledge in a novel way, primarily for economic benefit," the study ranks Japan, Switzerland, the United States and Sweden as the top four innovators among the 82 economies observed from 2002 to 2006 by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The number of patents a country generates per million people was deemed to be the most appropriate measure of innovation.
"Because Japan's population is only 42 percent of that of the U.S., its ratio of patents per million population is 3.5 times higher than the United States — and indeed the highest such ratio of all," a report on the study states.
Despite having a lower ranking in the "direct factors" that drive innovation, such as telecommunications infrastructure, and a still lower ranking in the index measuring environmental factors conducive to innovation, Japan still managed to top the list.
Reasons given for this apparent anomaly include the Japanese economy's large proportion of high-technology activities that are often "more innovation-intensive."
"This resource-poor economy has long taken an 'innovate or die' approach," the report says, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between many large companies and associated smaller firms.
Other factors include proportionately greater investment in research and development than the United States and most other major countries, and the benefit of more scientific researchers per million people.
For 2007 to 2011, the study predicts that all four leading innovators will retain their rankings, but that China, which has already overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest investor after the United States in research and development in absolute terms, is a country to watch in terms of acceleration in the innovation market.
Despite efforts to boost its innovation performance, the EU is unlikely to close the "innovation gap" with Japan and the U.S. over the next five years, the report says.
Even though Japan's innovation output surpassed those of all the other countries, a majority of 485 senior global executives taking an Economist survey cited the U.S. as by far the best place for innovation.
"The common view among executives is that Japan is not the most conducive place to innovate," the report says, noting that only 2 percent of respondents saw it as having the best conditions for innovation, compared with 40 percent for the U.S. and 12 percent for the second-place country, India.
Cómo se midió la investigación:
The research is based on an online survey of 485 senior global executives, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit in November 2006, as well as an analysis of data from the Economist Intelligence Unit and patent offices in the US, Japan and the EU. Fifty-two percent of the respondents surveyed for this report work for firms that had annual revenue of more than US$500m; 26% are employed by enterprises with revenue in excess of US$5bn.La presentación de los datos en EIU:
The Economist Intelligence Unit measured innovation by collating the number of patents per million of population for 82 economies based on data from the three patent offices. Patents was found to be the best proxy for innovation; as in indicator, it correlates well with three other proxies: (a) citations from scientific and technical journals; (b) the average of two ratios: the share of medium- and high-technology products in a country’s manufacturing output and the share of medium- and high-technology exports in its total manufacturing exports, taken from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation’s Industrial Development Report 2005; (c) the results of a survey question from the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report 2006 that asked respondents to rate the extent to which companies in 125 countries were adept at, or able to absorb, new technology.
The Economist Intelligence Unit selected a range of innovation drivers, both direct (e.g., R&D as a % of GDP) and indirect (e.g., access to investment finance). These were weighted according to their score derived from the results of the survey. The drivers comprise part of the Economist Intelligence Unit's business environment rankings that predicts how the business climate will change between now and 2011. These predictions were then fed into the innovation rankings to forecast how the league table would change in the next five years.
El documento está disponible para descarga.Heightened global competition is forcing governments and companies to find new ways to increase productivity, and this is creating renewed interest in the need to innovate. But there is no single, best method to do so. The countries at the top of the ranking are large and small; some value rote learning, while others emphasise spontaneity. All of the leading nations stress the use of government policies to encourage innovation, along with education systems that produce large numbers of scientists and engineers.
“The message for governments is that there is no substitute for good education, nor for policies that encourage investment in IT and communications infrastructure,” says Nigel Holloway, the editor of the report. “For companies, the process of renewal should, if anything, be accelerated. The proportion of total sales from new products and services needs to increase.”
The main findings include:
- Innovation has a beneficial effect on both national economic growth and on corporate performance. The evidence of such benefits is stronger at the microeconomic than at the macroeconomic level.
- Our survey panel cited a broad range of factors to explain what makes a country innovative, with the top determinants being technical skills of the workforce (92% of respondents) and quality of IT/telecommunications infrastructure (also 92%).
- China has more favourable conditions for innovation than India. With annual expenditure of US$136bn on R&D, China now outspends Japan. However, in the sphere of innovation, there is a “small country advantage”: 12 of today’s top 25 countries in our ranking have a population of less than 10 million.
- The return on innovation is estimated to be proportionately higher in middle-income countries such as Mexico and China than among richer countries. This suggests that the former group of economies may be able to catch up with the latter. Although middle-income countries need imported technology, the speed with which they absorb it may depend on their own domestic innovation performance.
- At the corporate level, our survey found that among firms where innovation is identified as critically important, 46% of respondents say their firms perform better than their peers; only 32% of the firms that do not think innovation is critically important perform better than their peers.
- Among respondents who say their firm’s R&D is equal to at least 5% of revenue, 44% say their company performs better than its peers. This compares with 35% among those who say their firm spends less than 5% of revenue on R&D.
- Among firms surveyed that are based in, or are closely connected to, a high-tech cluster such as Silicon Valley, 56% say they performed better than their peers; only 36% of firms outside of a high-tech cluster performed better than their peers.
“It is becoming quite clear that in order to remain competitive, innovation must become a priority at both the national and business level,” said Roger W. Farnsworth, Cisco’s director of Executive Thought Leadership. “Understanding the contributors to and enablers of innovation is critical to success in today's interactions-based economy.”
Puigcevert ofrece además otro estudio comparativo, el de WIPO. En este caso, múltiples estudios están disponibles:
El mencionado por Héctor, que confirma al de EUI.
El resumen por países, áreas de interés, empresas.
De éste último, su presentación:
Acerca de los países en desarrollo:“El número de solicitudes internacionales de patente sigue aumentando, especialmente en los países del Asia nororiental, en los que se ha registrado un extraordinario auge de solicitudes presentadas”, ha dicho el Sr. Francis Gurry, Director General Adjunto de la OMPI a quien atañe la supervisión de la labor que se lleva a cabo en el marco del PCT, añadiendo: “La innovación ha estado siempre en manos de Europa y Norteamérica. Actualmente, están apareciendo nuevos focos de innovación, en concreto en Asia nororiental, lo que está transformando el mapa del sistema de patentes y del futuro crecimiento económico mundial”.
Con un crecimiento del 26,6% en 2006 en relación con 2005, la República de Corea se sitúa por delante del Reino Unido y de Francia, y pasa así a ocupar el cuarto lugar entre los países de origen de las solicitudes internacionales PCT presentadas; por otra parte, en relación con los solicitantes procedentes de China se registró un incremento del 56,8% en la utilización del PCT, con lo que el país desbancó a Suiza y Suecia para situarse en el octavo lugar entre los principales países de origen.
Con algo menos de 50.000 solicitudes PCT, los inventores y la industria de los Estados Unidos de América representan el 34,1% (un 6,1% más que en 2005) de todas las solicitudes presentadas en 2006. Por lo que respecta a los solicitantes del Japón, que desbancaron a sus homólogos alemanes en 2003, haciéndose con el puesto N.º 2, han mantenido esa posición con un 18,5% del número total de solicitudes, lo que representa un 8,3% de aumento. Los inventores y la industria de Alemania conservan su tercer puesto, con un 11,7% de todas las solicitudes presentadas en 2006, lo que representa un 5,8% de aumento, seguidos de los usuarios de la República de Corea (4,1% del total de solicitudes, lo que representa un 26,6% de aumento) y de Francia (4,1% del total de solicitudes, lo que representa un 2,8% de aumento). De los 15 países que encabezan la lista de usuarios más prolíficos cabe destacar, entre los que han presentado un porcentaje de solicitudes que puede expresarse en dos cifras, Italia (que ocupa el decimoprimer lugar, con un porcentaje de crecimiento del 16,1% en 2006) e Israel (en el decimoquinto lugar, con un porcentaje de crecimiento del 18,3% en 2006).
Como Puigcevert indica, la participación Iberoamericana es muy baja. ¿Conclusiones?En 2006, se ha registrado un aumento en el número de solicitudes internacionales de patente procedentes de países en desarrollo, concretamente un 27,6% más que en 2005, lo que a su vez representa el 8,2% de todas las solicitudes internacionales de patente presentadas. Este aumento se debe, en gran medida, al número de solicitudes procedentes de la República de Corea (5.935) y de China (3.910), seguido de la India (627), Singapur (402), Sudáfrica (349), Brasil (265) y México (150). Los países en desarrollo representan el 79% de los Estados parte en el PCT, esto es, 106 de los 136 países que se han adherido al Tratado hasta la fecha.
Los diez usuarios procedentes de países en desarrollo que más utilizaron el PCT son los siguientes: Huawei Technologies (China), LG Electronics (República de Corea), Samsung Electronics (República de Corea), LG Chem (República de Corea), Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (República de Corea), ZTE Corporation (China), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (Singapur), Ranbaxy Laboratories (India), Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas e Industriales (India) y NHN Corporation (República de Corea).
