U.S. Losing Edge in Technological Innovation

A new report has been issued by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). Titled "The Atlantic Century: Benchmarking EU and U.S. Innovation and Competiveness," the report features the use of 16 indicators in six key areas to assess the extent to which nations are able to compete on the basis of innovation:

• human capital,
  
• innovation capacity,
  
• entrepreneurship,
  
• IT infrastructure,
  
• economic policy factors and
  
• economic performance

Unlike several recent studies that find that the U.S. leads in innovation-based competitiveness, this report finds that while the U.S. still leads the EU, it ranks sixth overall, behind Singapore, the world leader. However, the report also assesses nations’ progress on the 16 indicators since the turn of the century. On this measure of progress the U.S. performance is much worse; in fact, the U.S. ranks 40th of the 40 nations and regions examined. The EU-15 region has improved faster than the U.S. (but considerably behind the leader, China) and as a result, ranks 28th among the 40 nations/regions in change. If the EU-15 region as a whole continues to improve at this faster rate than the United States, it would surpass the United States in innovation-based competitiveness by 2020.

Read the article on the report in The New York Times.