Measuring the technology achievement index: comparison and ranking of countries

Abstract

Purpose- Countries that can adapt to the pace of technological developments, follow and use this speed have a stronger economy and obtain a significant competitive advantage in the global arena. Therefore, the countries make various regulations to increase the technological achievements, access to the global technologies, adapt to the rapid technological transformation and organize their sub-structures according to these technologies. Technology Achievement Index (TAI), which is one of the studies to evaluate the technological performance of countries, classifies countries according to their technological achievements. Methodology- In this study, TAI-16 of 105 countries is calculated by using t he methodology based on the original study of Desai et al. TAI that originally proposed in 2002 by Desai et al. is a unified index that revealing countries' technological abilities and performance in terms of technology capacity, diffusion of new technologies, diffusion of old innovations and development of human skills. TAI which consists of four main dimensions and eight sub-indicators of the dimensions calculate the average of the dimensions of the index based on the selected indicators. Each of four dimensions includes two sub-indicators. Findings- In this study, technological capabilities and performances of 105 countries were analyzed and Technology Achievement Index (TAI-16) was calculated using most of the data of 2015. Moreover, TAI-16 values of the 105 countries were classified as Leaders (TAI > 0,5), Potential Leaders (TAI = 0,35-0,49), Dynamic Adopters (TAI = 0,20-0,34), and Marginalized (TAI ˂ 0,20) following the methodology in TAI-02. Conclusion- According to TAI-16 classification, the countries were identified as follows; 40 countries as Leaders, 38 countries as Potential Leaders, 17 countries as Dynamic Adopters, and 10 countries as Marginalized. Furthermore, TAI ranking of the 105 countries was created. In this classification, while Switzerland had the highest with 0.813 TAI value, Ethiopia had the lowest value with 0,028 TAI value.