Korea tops annual EU Innovation Index

The European Union has just published its annual Innovation Union Scoreboard report, which includes an index measuring innovation in EU countries and benchmarks them against other countries around the world.  As reported in the local press, including the Korea Joongang Daily, Korea this year topped the rankings,outperforming the United States, Japan, European Union and Canada.
The two charts above (click to see a full size version), from the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014 shows the top ten ranking nations on the EU's index (on the left) and their growth rates (on the right). Korea not only ranks number one on the  index, slightly ahead of the U.S. and Japan, but also leads in the measure of growth rate. (the full EU report can be downloaded here.)

The EU index is calculated from twelve different measures and the second graphic (click for full size version) is a bar chart that shows South Korea's performance lead over the EU, calculated by dividing Korea's indicator value by that of the EU and multiplying by 100.  (Note the following acronymns in the graphic:   PCT refers to the Patent Cooperation Treaty, MHT contr. refers to Medium and High Technology products and KIS refers to Knowledge Intensive Services.)
This new report will no doubt be welcomed by many here in Korea, both in the private sector and government, given the centrality of innovation to the overall goal of the Park Geun-hye administration to develop a "creative economy."  However, it should be kept in mind that this is only one of several international measures of innovation and its primary value may lie in what it says about how the European countries view Korea.