The 25 Most Creative Countries in the World

With the Euro Cup in full swing and the Rio Olympics around the corner, everyone is experiencing a lot of national pride and international competitiveness. And while some people like to keep the game on the pitch, many are interested in finding out which countries are the best in more than just sports. In that vein, the Global Creativity Index was recently released and the nations of the world are clambering to see who took the top marks.

While the US landed fairly high at number two, it was Australia that won out amongst the most creative countries in the world. Scandinavian countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland also rounded out the top 10, showing that a stable economy does a lot to improve creativity. Japan, Italy, and Luxembourg brought up the end of the list, typically countries that end up low on the job satisfaction scale as well. While the implications of creativity may not have seemed that important, this list is proving otherwise.

The metrics used to measure countries on the Global Creativity Index are technology, talent, tolerance. As the report explains, technology pertains to the research and development investment per capita, talent refers to the amount of adults with higher education and the size of the workforce in creative fields, and tolerance emphasized a country's inclusion of minorities and immigrants in their society.

The question is: do these metrics actually equate to creativity? Yes, you can't have a country that's good at oil painting or opera singing. But does tolerance of other cultures actually make a country more creative? Even the inclusion of technology focused research and development is a bit questionable when you consider that most of it is used to improve existing tech on the market. The only real metric in this list is the size of the workforce in a creative field. And still, Australia takes the top place with the US falling to third, and Iceland moving up from 11th to second.

Check out the full list of the most creative countries in the world:

GlobalCompetitivenessIndex2015

H / T World Economic Forum

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Written by:
Conor is the Lead Writer for Tech.co. For the last six years, he’s covered everything from tech news and product reviews to digital marketing trends and business tech innovations. He's written guest posts for the likes of Forbes, Chase, WeWork, and many others, covering tech trends, business resources, and everything in between. He's also participated in events for SXSW, Tech in Motion, and General Assembly, to name a few. He also cannot pronounce the word "colloquially" correctly. You can email Conor at conor@tech.co.
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