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How We Measured It
Of all the world's economies, the U.S. is still the most supportive of technology companies, according to a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit conducted for the Business Software Alliances.
But the U.S. ought not rest on its laurels, the study finds.
In ranking 66 countries on their competitiveness in information technology, the study measured six areas: overall business environment, IT infrastructure quality, human capital, environment for research and development and legal matters, support for the IT industry generally, and overall business climate.
The most important, accounting for 25% of a score, relates to the health of a nation's R&D sector. The study looked at private and government expenditures on research per 100 people, the number of new patents registered in each country, and royalty and licensing revenue.
Researchers tapped a key new source of data, the European Patent Office, which hadn't been available before. This caused some major shifts from last year, notably pushing Taiwan and South Korea, which ranked second and eighth overall in last year's study, respectively, to 15th and 16th place this year.
The quality of a country's IT infrastructure and its human capital each accounted for 20% of a country's score. Infrastructure measures per capita spending on IT, as well as the percentage of the population that has access to PCs, wireless phones, and broadband internet connections. Human capital scores asses the ability of a country's educational institutions to train technologists who also have business skills, the total number of students at colleges and universities as a percentage of the overall population, and employment in the technology sector.
The country's general level of support for the IT industry accounted for 15% of a score. This considers a range of metrics, including government spending on IT hardware and whether officials have an even-handed public policy stance toward technology companies. To measure a country's legal environment, which accounts for 10% of scores, authors looked at the enforcement and transparency of intellectual property legislation as well as a nation's adherence to international IP treaties.
Finally, 10% of the score was calculated based on the overall business climate. This included such factors as the degree to which a country's system of laws guarantees and protects private property laws, the level of government regulation involved in creating a new business, and the freedom of businesses to compete.
