Why aren't I using tons of amazing South Korean and Swedish-designed products in my daily life if this is the case? (or jealous of all the great products they seem to have that I don't have access to?)
And H&M, Minecraft, Battlefield, MySQL, Candy Crush, Absolut Vodka, The Pirate Bay, Husqvarna, the pacemaker, the three-point seatbelt, the zipper, and much more...
Also, folks outside Korea don't generally know this, Samsung is way bigger than just phones, appliances or consumer electronics [1].
It operates businesses in sectors like chipmaking, construction, IT, chemicals, power plants, shipbuilding, etc.
If you've seen a Samsung container ship, or a Samsung-built building (Burj Khalifa, Petronas Towers), you'll have gotten a glimpse at their size and scope.
Their consumer-facing businesses are just the tip of the iceberg.
I just got back from a month in Seoul, and was very surprised when I heard that Samsung makes men's suits there. But, come on... Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, Intel, AMD, Amazon, the US list goes on. Also as somebody that has visited both Sweden and South Korea for extended periods, they both are very pro-America and have an appetite for American consumerism and anything American made.
I hear you, but most of the metrics used were normalized (to GDP, R&D $, population, share).
Maybe on a normalized basis the picture looks a little different?
Also, totally unrelated, and I've never been to China, but based on the observations of Connie Chan (of Andreesen-Horowitz), it seems China has a bunch of innovations in the retail space [1] that most Americans aren't aware of. US innovation is still dominant no doubt, but I'm always fascinated by innovations that we don't hear about because it gives us a sense of perspective in the world.
Presumably the criteria and outcome are per-capita and per-GDP, otherwise every single ranking would just be of "what countries have the biggest population and the most money", which is not a very useful analysis.
edit; so the ranking is probably more of a "most innovation-oriented economies" [=higher ratio of R&D/IP industries to retail/manufacturing/agro/etc] rather than "countries creating the most innovations"
