DUBAI, 21 February 2007 — The UAE ranks 14th in a recent global innovation index survey, way ahead of the Asian economies India and China who have been ranked 23 and 29, respectively.
Kuwait is the only other GCC country on the World Business/Insead Global Innovation Index 2007 and is ranked at number 30 among the 107 countries.
According to Insead, the 14th rank of the UAE in the global list is another sign of the shifting tectonic plates of the world economy.
“The brightest star in the Middle East — UAE has benefited from government leadership that sets it apart from its neighbors through policies explicitly designed and implemented to attract skilled workers and technology-intensive companies.”
The result, particularly in Dubai, has been growing clusters of innovative companies, the study said.
The eight innovation “pillars” in the Global Innovation Index framework were grouped in two separate categories: “inputs,” factors that underpin innovative capacity such as institutions and policies, human capacity, infrastructure, technological sophistication, and business markets and capital; and “outputs,” the benefits that a nation derives from the inputs in terms of knowledge creation, competitiveness and wealth generation.
