most innovative nation,

Japan is the world's most innovative nation, according to a recent study by the business information arm of the Economist magazine.Defining innovation as "the application of knowledge in a novel way, primarily for economic benefit," the study ranks Japan, Switzerland, the United States and Sweden as the top four innovators among the 82 economies observed from 2002 to 2006 by the Economist Intelligence Unit.The number of patents a country generates per million people was deemed to be the most appropriate measure of innovation. "Because Japan's population is only 42 percent of that of the U.S., its ratio of patents per million population is 3.5 times higher than the United States — and indeed the highest such ratio of all," a report on the study states.