J Roessner

Beginning in the late 1980’s the Technology Policy and Assessment Center (TPAC) at Georgia Tech has been measuring the capability of nations to compete in technology-enabled exports. The resulting “High Tech Indicators” (HTI) contribute to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Science & Engineering Indicators. Our focus has been on the rapidly industrializing countries; we include a number of highly developed countries as benchmarks.

In the early days, the inclusion of a number of Asian nations as potential high tech competitors to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) seemed somewhat whimsical. Obviously, the U.S., Japan, and the leading Western European countries were far-removed from the up-and-coming Asian economies. That is no longer the case. In this report, we profile the emergence of the Asian nations as bonafide global competitors. To do so, we emphasize longitudinal comparisons from 1993 through 2005 using our traditional HTI measures for 10 Asian countries plus the U.S. as a benchmark, with selected comparisons to the full set of 33 HTI countries. We then offer a new perspective for 2005 based on our newly formulated statistical HTI measures.

How can national capabilities to develop emerging technologies be measured? We use INSPEC and EI Compendex class codes to examine 33 countries’ research and development activity. We select candidate emerging technologies based on the Rand Corporation’s categories. We screen these to tally those that show strong recent, and increasing, R&D publication rates. The resulting measures show strong convergence; indeed, their lack of divergence is unsettling. Our measures suggest that China now stands forth as an emerging technology’ research power comparable to Germany, the UK, and France. A number of other nations evidence a striking lack of R&D activity, posing questions about their longerrange high-tech competitiveness.

Beginning in the late 1980’s the Technology Policy and Assessment Center (TPAC) at Georgia Tech has been measuring the capability of nations to compete in technology-enabled exports. The resulting “High Tech Indicators” (HTI) contribute to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Science & Engineering Indicators. Our focus has been on the rapidly industrializing countries; we include a number of highly developed countries as benchmarks.

In the early days, the inclusion of a number of Asian nations as potential high tech competitors to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) seemed somewhat whimsical. Obviously, the U.S., Japan, and the leading Western European countries were far-removed from the up-and-coming Asian economies. That is no longer the case. In this report, we profile the emergence of the Asian nations as bonafide global competitors. To do so, we emphasize longitudinal comparisons from 1993 through 2005 using our traditional HTI measures for 10 Asian countries plus the U.S. as a benchmark, with selected comparisons to the full set of 33 HTI countries. We then offer a new perspective for 2005 based on our newly formulated statistical HTI measures.

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; TheWorld Competitiveness Yearbook (edited by the International Institute for Management Development, Lausanne,Switzerland); and the competitiveness rankings generated by researchers at the United Nations University inMaastricht. The paper concludes with observations about the differences in country rankings generated by thesedifferent efforts to measure national competitiveness.

How can national capabilities to develop emerging technologies be measured? We use INSPEC and EI Compendex class codes to examine 33 countries’ research and development activity. We select candidate emerging technologies based on the Rand Corporation’s categories. We screen these to tally those that show strong recent, and increasing, R&D publication rates. The resulting measures show strong convergence; indeed, their lack of divergence is unsettling. Our measures suggest that China now stands forth as an emerging technology’ research power comparable to Germany, the UK, and France. A number of other nations evidence a striking lack of R&D activity, posing questions about their longerrange high-tech competitiveness.

Georgia Tech’s Technology Policy and Assessment Center, with support from the US National Science Foundation, has been generating High Tech Indicators (HTI) – measures of national technology-based export competitiveness since 1987. This paper reports the HTI results for 33 nations in 1999 in comparison with those of 1990, 1993, and 1996.HTI includes four “input indicators” and a key “output indicator” – technological standing. We construct a new composite input indicator here and examine its predictive capability. Input indicators for 1990 and 1993 show intriguing relationships to 1999 technological standing. We compare the indicators for various groups – leading and emerging Western economies, rapidly developing Asian economies, former East Bloc nations, and lagging Latin American countries. The United States presently exhibits a dominant position, but signs strongly point toward increasingly broad-based competition in technology-based products.

The Georgia Tech High Tech Indicators (HTI) were initiated in conjunction with Science and Technology Consultants, under the leadership of Thomas Kuehn and Russell Drew. Over the past decade, indicator researh and refinement has been centered at Georgia Tech. Support has been provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation's Science Resources Studies Unit and the Research on Science & Technology Program to enrich Science and Engineering Indicators.

We welcome CIBER contacts in sharing information on technology-based competitiveness in various nations and in working together to identify technological opportunities.

In 1999 we plan another round of HTI. Our International Indicators Panel consists of persons with expertise on technology-based development in 30 countries. Please e-mail us if you would be interested in participating (via e-mail and the worldwide web).