The Big Paradox from the 2008 Innovation Confidence Index

Michael LoBue writes: Today the Institute releases the 2008 Innovation Confidence Index, the second annual report of global consumer confidence in innovation to improve one's life.

If you haven’t downloaded the report, you can do so — the results are almost certain to surprise!

Page 9 of the report contains the Innovation Confidence Index ranking for each of the 25 countries in the 2008 study. The rankings might surprise — but read the paragraph beneath the table and the charts that follow on page 10.

The Great Paradox of the 2008 Innovation Confidence Index
The Innovation Confidence Index correlates highly a nation’s communal values, an index developed by the World Values Survey. About this Principal Investigator Levie writes:

” This variable is based on five indicators that capture different, but highly correlated, dimensions of communal values, including religiosity, patriotism, need to respect authority, teaching goals (obedience versus independence), and family values. It is usually portrayed as varying from “traditional” communal values to “secular/rational” communal values.” [pg. 9]

Levie questions the seeming paradoxical nature of this finding, asking: “Why would Innovation Confidence be high in countries with strong traditional values, like South American countries, the United States and Ireland, and low in countries where secularism is valued, such as the Netherlands, Finland and Japan? Shouldn’t it be high in countries that are known to be innovative?”

In short, this finding is simply counterintuitive. Levie sums it up this way:

”In summary, it is perhaps an irony that new products and services are welcomed most vigorously by people whose societies are most traditional. New products and services may represent a way of escaping from community rules, because the rules were invented without anticipating such products and services. Individuals in these countries may be less discerning in their cost/benefit analysis of new products and services, because novelty has more value to them than it has to those living in secular/rational societies.” [pg. 10]