A comparison of recent assessments of the high-tech competitiveness of nations

The Technology Policy and Assessment Center at Georgia Institute of Technology, primarily with support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), has been working on “High Tech Indicators” of national technological competitiveness since 1987. This paper summarizes the Technology Competitiveness Indicators for 33 nations in 1999 and provides vertical comparisons with the same research project results conducted in 1993 and 1996. Also, the authors compare the Georgia Tech HTI with the U.S. Council on Competitiveness Innovation Index; The World Competitiveness Yearbook (edited by the International Institute for Management Development, Lausanne, Switzerland); and the competitiveness rankings generated by researchers at the United Nations University in Maastricht. The paper concludes with observations about the differences in country rankings generated by these different efforts to measure national competitiveness.