More evidence of Israel’s climb in technology creativity is found in a research report that puts the country in 7th place in terms of the number of international patents taking into account the size of the population. The research was carried out by staff at Harvard and MIT and monitored patents between 1975-1996. It puts Israel ahead of Germany, Holland, France, Britain, South Korea and Italy, but below Japan, US, Switzerland, Taiwan, Sweden, and Finland. In 1977 Israel was placed fifteenth and would have been even higher at the end of the period had it not been for the massive influx of immigrants from 1989 onwards. Reduction in R&D funding was also cited as a contributing factor which has meant that only in 1996 has the number of patents started to rise again.
