IT Competitiveness 2008 : Asia

Taiwan’s looking good. Really good. It’s surprising how good it’s looking, but – there you have it. The rest of the leading Asian countries are not far behind. In the world’s IT competitiveness report for 2008 Taiwan’s ranked second. Why? R&D environment. Or as the “How technology sectors grow Benchmarking IT industry competitiveness 2008“ paper puts it (PR):

Taiwan has risen from 6th to 2nd in the overall index based primarily on its strong performance in the R&D environment category, and particularly in patents. […]

East Asia boasts the strongest R&D environments. Dynamic innovation, supported by a strong R&D environment, is a major contributor to IT industry competitiveness. East Asian economies Taiwan, South Korea and Japan—remain the index leaders when it comes to the R&D environment for technology production.

Who’s leading the IT competitiveness report in Asia?

1. Taiwan 69.2
2. South Korea 64.1
3. Singapore 63.4
4. Japan 62.2
5. (Israel 56.7)
6. Hong Kong 54.1
7. Malaysia 34.2
8. Thailand 31.5
9. Philippines 29.8
10. India 28.9
11. China 27.6

Looking at the actual index, Taiwan’s actually not ranking very high on most scales, but has – by far – the world’s leading R&D environment (25% of the score), which puts it at a total rank of 2nd in the world.