Keeping Track: creative countries

World Economic Forum ranks nations

How do you rate a country's economic creativity?

A report by the World Economic Forum has assessed many factors - including demonstrated innovation, amount of home-grown technology, the importation of technology, and the creation of environments seen as favorable for start-up businesses - to come up with a comparative ranking of the 59 nations it surveyed.

The "Global Competitiveness Report 2000," authored by renowned Harvard University economists Michael Porter, Andrew Warner, and Jeffrey Sachs, argues that a country's "growth competitiveness" can't be gauged by looking at start-up capital and level of income in a vacuum. Economic growth is driven by how effectively the resources are harnessed, it says.

A look at the leaders and the laggers.

Top 10 countries

United States (1)

Finland (2)

Singapore (3)

Luxembourg (4)

Sweden (5)

Israel (6)

Ireland (7)

Netherlands (8)

United Kingdom (9)

Iceland (10)

Bottom 10 countries

Vietnam (50)

Peru (51)

Russia (52)

El Salvador (53)

Venezuela (54)

Ukraine (55)

Colombia (56)

Bulgaria (57)

Ecuador (58)

Bolivia (59)

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society