When it comes to innovation, Australia continues to punch below its weight.
Australia has slipped one place to 19th on Bloomberg's 2019 Innovation Index released this month – overtaken by China for the first time.
Each year Bloomberg analyses countries using seven metrics including education, research and development, spending, manufacturing capability and concentration of high-tech public companies. It then publishes a list of the 60 most innovative nations.
South Korea retained the global crown for a sixth time in 2019 with Germany, a leader research and education, a close second.
China jumped three places to 16th thanks largely to patent activity. China ranked No. 2 in patent activity on the strength of R&D from Huawei Technologies Co. and BOE Technology Group. However, it still lags behind most innovative countries in terms of overall productivity.
Britain fell one spot to 18th – also losing out to China for the first time – while Sweden, the runner-up in 2018, plunged to seventh.
Big winner
The US moved up to eighth place, after falling out of the top 10 for the first time last year.
Israel, which was a big winner by jumping five spots to fifth overall, leapfrogging Singapore, Sweden and Japan. The tech savvy nation was boosted by a big jump in new patents during 2018.
Sweden, which was last year’s runner-up, surprisingly plunged to seventh spot.
The United Arab Emirates made the highest debut in 46th place and Brazil rejoined the index in the 45th spot after not being ranked last year.
Other new entrants included India, Mexico, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
The 2019 ranking process began with more than 200 economies. Nations that didn't report data for at least six categories were eliminated, trimming the total list to 95.
The top 60 are listed here:
Bloomberg innovation index
1 South Korea
2 Germany
3 Finland
4 Switzerland
5 Israel
6 Singapore
7 Sweden
8 United States
9 Japan
10 France
11 Denmark
12 Austria
13 Belgium
14 Ireland
15 Netherlands
16 China
17 Norway
18 United Kingdom
19 Australia
20 Canada
21 Italy
22 Poland
23 Iceland
24 New Zealand
25 Czech Republic
26 Malaysia
27 Russia
28 Luxembourg
29 Romania
30 Spain
31 Slovenia
32 Hungary
33 Turkey
34 Portugal
35 Greece
36 Estonia
37 Lithuania
38 Hong Kong
39 Slovakia
40 Thailand
41 Bulgaria
42 Latvia
43 Malta
44 Croatia
45 Brazil
46 United Arab Emirates
47 Iran
48 Cyprus
49 Serbia
50 Argentina
51 South Africa
52 Tunisia
53 Ukraine
54 India
55 Kuwait
56 Saudi Arabia
57 Qatar
58 Chile
59 Mexico
60 Vietnam
