Is the United States falling behind in creativity and innovation?

Like many of my peers, I am an ethnocentric American. As patriotic citizens of the United States, we are taught Americans are the best in the world at everything. We are the leaders in creativity and innovation. After all we did send the first man to the moon.

Is this still true or are we only deluding ourselves? Is the United States still the most creative and innovative of all? Are we still the most competitive?

Let us see what Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), has to say. His team used sixteen indicators to measure global competitiveness. They fall into six broad categories:

1.) Human capital
2.) Innovation capacity
3.) Entrepreneurship
4.) IT infrastructure
5.) Economic policy
6.) Economic performance.

The ITIF report finds the United States ranks sixth overall among forty nations/regions in overall innovation and global competitiveness. Singapore is number one, Denmark is number four. When you are in an innovation race, do you consider coming in at sixth place to be acceptable?

Now that I have your attention, take a look at which countries are making the fastest progress toward the new knowledge-based innovation economy.

When you look at the change score that measures the rate of innovation over the past decade and compare this to the other 39 countries, the United States ranks last in progress toward the new knowledge-based innovation economy over the last decade. We are number 40 out of 40 nations/regions!

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what is going to happen to us all?

To read the full report by the ITIF, please go to The Atlantic Century.