Qatar make rapid progress in global innovation index
Qatar achieved a marked improvement in this year's Global Innovation Report. The country is the global leader when it comes to the ease of paying taxes, tertiary inbound mobility of international students and spending on general infrastructure.
The Index, which measured performance of 128 countries on 82 indicators, placed Qatar in the third position in the Arab world and 50th globally in the overall performance.
Recording progress on innovation input sub-indexes, Qatar advanced six positions on infrastructure pillar (ICT access and use), 10 positions on market sophistication pillar and 28 positions on business sophistication pillar, thus ranking 16th, 68th and 78th globally, respectively.
Other strong indicators for Qatar are — electricity output (6th), university/industry research collaboration (8th), state of cluster development (8th), joint venture/strategic alliance deals (8th) and foreign direct investment outflows (16th).
Nine ranks gain has been also reported for Qatar's Creative Outputs pillar globally ranked 49th.
As per Qatar's ICT Landscape Report 2016: Business, 13% of multinational ICT companies invested in R&D, with 8% of local ICT companies investing in R&D activities in 2014.
Among the ICT enterprises investing in R&D in Qatar, a majority (63%) of them spent less than 5% of their annual revenue for R&D in 2014 in Qatar.
Recording progress, Qatar is now ranked 52nd on Wikipedia edits and 46th on Video uploads on YouTube indicators within Online creativity sub-pillar. Qatar gained 5 ranks in generic top-level domains and is now ranked 56th globally.
Courtesy: Qatar-tribune.com
