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Silicon Valley and Finland 51PATHS OF TECHNOLOGICAL, ECONOMIC, AND SOCIALDEVELOPMENT: A STATISTICAL COMPARISONLet us start by looking at some basic indicators of the Silicon Valley andFinnish models that have created two of the most dynamic information technologymilieux of innovation in the world. The United Nations TechnologyAchievement Index ranks Finland and the United States as the first and secondcountries, based on such measures as technology innovation, diffusion of theInternet, technology exports, and human skills (see figure 2.1). The WorldEconomic Forum ranked the United States and Finland the first and secondmost competitive economies in the world in 2002 (figure 2.2). In 2003, theytopped the chart in the reverse order. This reflected such traditional criteria ofeconomic performance as productivity in which the United States has, for a0.8000.7000.6000.5000.4000.3000.2000.1000.0000.744 0.7330.581Finland US Advancedeconomies0.279Rest of theworldNotes:The index is based on four components: creation of technology (the number of patents grantedper capita, the receipts of royalty and license fees from abroad per capita), diffusion of recentinnovations (the diffusion of the Internet, exports of high- and medium-technology products as ashare of all exports), diffusion of old innovations (telephones, electricity), and human skills(mean years of schooling, gross enrolment ratio of tertiary students enrolled in science, mathematics,and engineering).By “advanced economies” we mean largely the same as the International Monetary Fund; thatis, the Western economies (United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, UnitedKingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece,Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland) and the strongest Asian economies (Japan, Korea,Singapore; Hong Kong and Taiwan are not included here because they are not counted independentlyin all statistics).Source: UNDP (2001)Figure 2.1Technological development measured by the UN TechnologyAchievement Index, 2001