Innovation report slams Thailand and Indonesia

Thailand and Indonesia receive a damning verdict in a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a US think-tank. It seeks to measure innovation by looking at new technologies, new business models, new products and services and entrepreneurship. The reports cites the race for leadership in the global innovation economy.

They studied the innovation policies of 56 major countries. They looked at basic scientific R&D; effective science, technology, engineering, and math education; promotion of ICT; technology transfer and commercialization from universities and national research centers; tax incentives for innovation and brain drain policies. They also looked at negative barriers to innovation and trade such as currency or standards manipulation, forced IP transfer, domestic sourcing of production as a condition of market access, export subsidies and inadequate protection of IPRs.

Interestingly they categories these policies into 4 areas: 

good: benefit to the country and the world
bad: negative effect on the country or the world
ugly: benefit to the country but harms other countries self-destructive: negative effect on the country but helping the rest of the world

The usual innovation stars from Scandinavia to Singapore fared well. Two of the weakest countries are Indonesia and Thailand. They both contribute poorly at a global level and also come out as destructive to their own economies.  The report says they underinvest in research, produce fewer science researchers, use trade barriers, have weak IPR system, don’t focus on ICT enough and have relatively poorer innovation policies.