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Survey Ranks Israel 3rd in Innovation Globally

by TheTower.org Staff |

Last week, the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum (WEF) released its Global Competitiveness Report. Israel ranked 27th out of 144 nations overall, and ranked third for innovation:

The report describes Israel’s strengths (.pdf):

The country’s main strengths remain its world-class capacity for innovation (3rd), which rests on innovative businesses that benefit from the presence of some of the world’s best research institutions (3rd), support by the government through public procurement policies (9th), and a favorable financial environment for start-ups (availability of venture capital is assessed at 9th place).

Last year, Israel was one of the top performers in the WEF’s newly created Human Capital Index. Earlier this year, the World Wildlife Federation and the Cleantech Group rated Israel as the top cleantech innovator in the world . Israel also recently became a partner to the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project, which is described as the “largest research and innovation program of its kind in the world.” Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s gave Israel its highest ratings this year for both long and short term obligations.

In The Real Big Winner of the Arab Spring, published in the December 2013 issue of The Tower Magazine, Gabriel Scheinmann observed:

At the same time, Israel has emerged from the chaos relatively unscathed. Its economy has not missed a beat: Tourism is at an all-time high as Europeans shun their traditional Mediterranean vacation-spots for ironically safer Israeli beaches, trade with Asia and Latin America has increased, and Israel is currently the only OECD country to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio. The Jerusalem Post recently reported that Israel’s GDP grew 14.7 percent from 2009-2012 and experienced 3.4 percent growth in the first half of 2013. In addition, the first of Israel’s recently discovered offshore gas fields came online in March, placing the country on track to becoming an energy exporter.

 

[Photo: StateOfIsrael / Flickr ]

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