©iStock/Hansslegers Which country is putting a lot of money into developing new technologies? In the world of ideas, it's South Korea, lifting itself up from their bootstraps through a combination of government support and private enterprise. Surprise, surprise. Germany, Sweden, Japan and Switzerland rounded out the top five in the 2016 Bloomberg Innovation Index , which scored economies using factors including research and development spending and concentration of high-tech public companies. South Korea's almost six-point edge on No. 2 Germany — and outpacing of neighbors Japan (No. 4) and China (No. 21) — also might understate the degree of economic competition felt among those in the Asian nation. Read more: These are the World's Most Innovative Economies