Estonia was recognized as one of the Innovation Champions by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 8th, in Las Vegas, US. The Minister of Education and Research Mrs. Mailis Reps was there to accept the award.

Estonia was one of the 16 countries listed as an Innovation Champion 2019, out of 61 countries evaluated. The Innovation Champions are leading the world in having the best environment for innovation according to the International Innovation Scorecard. Besides Estonia, this year’s Innovation Champions are Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to the CTA, Innovation Champions typically outperform other countries in measures of Freedom, Broadband, Entrepreneurial Activity, Resiliency – a new category to quantify the degree to which a country’s government and society are sustainable – and Self-Driving Vehicles.

Other 2019 trends include:

  • Small countries tend to lead in R&D investment. Israel and South Korea spent the most of their GDP on R&D, with more than four percent, followed by Switzerland (3.4 percent), Sweden (3.3 percent) and Austria (3.1 percent).
  • On each continent, the countries with average download speeds above 18 mbps also ranked highly overall.
  • Eight of the 10 most resilient countries — graded on criteria including the visibility of supply chains and strength of digital and physical infrastructure — are European.
  • None of the 38 returning countries saw its Self-Driving Vehicles grade drop. In fact, many have further encouraged self-driving vehicle development by deploying self-driving public transit vehicles or preparing to build international test tracks. Year-over-year, we have seen more countries adopt laws allowing SDV testing.

For more information, please see CTA press release and Innovation Scorecard.
Estonia’s Scorecard available HERE.

 

Image by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research

(Cover image by Roman Neiman)