East Asia and Northern Europe are Leaders on Idea Creation and Intensity

South Korea has been named the world’s most idea-intensive nation, with the top 20 dominated by East Asian and Northern European countries, according to PwC’s Global Economy Watch.

In particular, the Nordic countries punch above their weight in terms of patents granted per million population: Sweden, Finland and Denmark all appear in the top 10 while Norway is ranked 16th. European nations occupy 13 places among the top 20 with Germany and France ranked eighth and thirteenth respectively.

The UK has also broken into the top 20, with 311 patents granted per million population, but it still lags behind many European nations, including Ireland.  In terms of absolute number of patents given it is ranked eighth in the world.

East Asia also performs strongly on the intensity index with Japan placed fourth and Singapore fourteenth. China appears in the top 20 for the first time and leads the way on the absolute number of patents granted.

The findings are based on PwC analysis of World Intellectual Property Organisation datasets regarding patents granted in 2017, with adjustments for population size. The analysis also demonstrates a strong correlation between idea intensity and R&D expenditure with the top 20 dominated by those nations spending the highest proportion of their GDP on research.