“With the rise of AI,
self-driving cars, and wi-fi connected appliances, it can feel like innovation
is everywhere these days.”[1]
Lest the BBC be presumed to be referring to California, the fifth largest
economy in the world, with Caltech and Stanford University, government
investment in IT and data infrastructure, and a high concentration of science/technology
graduates and employment, California (as well as Massachusetts) is absent from
the BBC’s rankings of technologically innovative countries. So Switzerland
comes up in that ranking as the world’s foremost in computer technology, while
the U.S. comes in third, with states like California and Mississippi being lost
in an average that does not correspond to any actual place.
Of course, Europe presents itself as myriad of republics, with the E.U. not being counted, and thus ranked, even though the U.S. rather than California or Massachusetts is counted, and thus ranked. Referring to the 2016 Milken Institute's "State Technology and Science Index," an article in Bloomberg highlights the great science and technology divide existing between the fifty states.[2] With the Index showing a strong positive correlation between a state's innovation ranking and its GDP (gross domestic product), it is obvious that averaging California or Massachusetts with Alabama and Mississippi would be misleading for any generalizations. So too would be averaging Switzerland and Romania in Europe.
Put another way, the BBC’s ranking highlights little Finland, The Netherlands, and Denmark in the top ten, all three of which are E.U. states, and yet ignores the U.S. member states completely. It is telling, therefore, that the Global Innovation Index Ranking of 2024 is based in part on the assumption that it is appropriate to average all the U.S. states together on technological innovation, but somehow ill-fitting to lump all of the European states (whether E.U. states or not) together. Not even a polity in Europe having full sovereignty could explain or justify the incongruency, for every E.U. state has delegated some governmental sovereignty to the E.U. Perhaps it is denial of the E.U. instantiating modern federalism that is behind the inconsistency in the Global Innovation Index Ranking for 2024. For in terms of GDP, territory, and even population (clustering) too, the E.U. states and the U.S. states are roughly equivalent (and the E.U. and U.S. are thus equivalent too).
The Global Innovation Index Ranking 2024: Including the U.S.[3]
1.
Switzerland
2.
Sweden
3.
United States
4.
Singapore
5.
United Kingdom
6.
Republic of Korea
7.
Finland
8.
The Netherlands
9.
Germany
10. Denmark
Averaging all of the U.S. member-states into #3 rather than listing the foremost American states in technological innovation may be what allows Denmark to be in the top ten, and perhaps this could also be said of the E.U. states on the list: Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands, and Germany. Alternatively, the following ranking, which I have assembled in a cursory manner, may be more accurate, as a consistent polity-basis for comparison replaces the false union-state equivalence:
The Global Innovation Index Ranking 2024: Including the E.U.
1. California
2. Massachusetts
3.
Switzerland
4.
European Union
5.
Washington
6. South Korea
7.
Japan
8.
China
9. United Kingdom
10. Singapore
California is no longer held down in a lower average of all the U.S. member states, and Massachusetts and Switzerland follow close behind. The European Union’s rank of #4 reflects the averaging from Sweden to Romania. That no E.U. states are listed leaves room for the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, mainly due to the efforts by companies in computer tech in Pittsburgh. Of course, we could refuse to sit both E.U. and U.S. states, and thereby leave more room to other areas of the globe to make the cut. Perhaps a ranking of the top 20 could include E.U. and U.S. states, but without the E.U. and U.S. themselves being ranked. We could do another ranking, using the E.U. for all of its states and the U.S. for all of its states, and thus leave room for sleeping giants in other parts of the world that are quite innovative yet are not getting credit for it. To avoid a noxious political category mistake, avoid including the U.S. (instead of its states) when the E.U. is not included while E.U. states are included.
3. Lindsey Galloway, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Innovative Countries,”
