Denmark Takes Second Place in Best Biotechnology Innovation Potential
This table lists all 54 countries in top-to-bottom order based on their overall innovation scores. It also illustrates a nation’s rank in each category, showing the sub-score for each category color-coded on a coarse scale in comparison to other countries. As a result, the table offers a quick overview of the final results, an indication of a nation’s rough performance in each category and the opportunity to compare the numbers when desired.
The United States remains at the top, extending its lead from last year over the second-place country. The next tier of finishers, however, is rather tightly packed. Second-place Denmark, for example, scored 13% higher than 10th-place Canada. And there was only a 22% difference in the overall scores between the second and 20th-place holder, Luxembourg
The Scorecard measures nation’s aggregate performance in each of the seven categories—Productivity, IP Protection, Enterprise Support, Intensity, Education/Workforce, Foundations, and Policy & Stability—yields the final score. In brief, for each country the average of a category’s component scores (e.g., “IP strength” and “perceived IP protection”) provides the category score. A simple sum of the category scores generates the overall innovation score. Normalization techniques are used which that give each component and each category equal weight. Because the score is composed of averages of available data, any gaps in the data, indicated as blanks in the table, do not affect the overall scores.
The table’s color-coding helps to reveal the weaknesses of some high finishers and the strengths of certain countries with lower overall scores. For example, fifth-place Singapore performs poorly in the Intensity category. Conversely, 40th-place Saudi Arabia ranks relatively well in Education/Workplace.
As the data make clear, the top finishers overall tend to score respectably in each category. That stands to reason, as a healthy biotech sector is dependent on so many factors—from a diverse workforce skilled in both bench science and business to support systems including everything from the availability of capital to the access to ports.
