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NCBNational Capability Benchmark
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Challenge the benchmark

Choose a score and give the benchmark a specific reason to reconsider it.

When you submit, the form attaches the current score and confidence for the country and capability you chose.

Submissions are public and start as awaiting review. A maintainer can add a response and signature after review.

Where does Singapore stand on Experimentation?

Dataset 9.3.0

This page reads one capability from the published data and is recomputed with every release. It separates what Singapore does, which makes the score, from what the country has, which sits beside the score, and places the country among the 10 countries at the nearest income. The text describes the data and recommends no policy.

What does the score rest on?

Score60.5Confidence0.36thin evidence

Confidence is in the thin band, so the score rests on little evidence.

The Experimentation score is the equal-weight mean of the positions of six indicators on a 0 to 100 scale that every country sets together. Confidence measures the evidence behind the score and sits beside it as a second number.

The Experimentation score tracks GDP per capita at r = 0.72 across 120 countries.

Observed indicators

  • Resident patent applications

    2,024 per million people

    World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD), 2021

    Position on the scale100.0Peer median89.410 peers with a value

  • Resident trademark applications

    15,088 per million people

    World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT), 2021

    Position on the scale40.3Peer median26.37 peers with a value

  • Resident industrial design applications

    683 per million people

    World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT), 2021

    Position on the scale48.9Peer median13.68 peers with a value

  • New public software repositories

    1,592,972 per million people

    GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv), 2026

    Position on the scale100.0Peer median50.610 peers with a value

  • Early-stage entrepreneurial activity

    11 % aged 18-64

    Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate), 2014

    Position on the scale9.4Peer median15.33 peers with a value

  • Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure

    60.6 % not deterred

    Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate), 2014

    Position on the scale64.7Peer median56.13 peers with a value

No comparable source yet, so lowering confidence: venture deals, firms through regulatory sandboxes, and university spinouts.

No condition is published beside Experimentation in this release, so the page shows only the indicators that make the score.

Where does Singapore sit among its peers?

The peers are the 10 countries at the nearest income. Income is GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, in constant international dollars, for the latest year the World Bank publishes, and distance is measured on a log scale, where half and double are equally far. No country is picked by hand, and the set changes when the data does.

In this release peer income runs from US$ 63,362 to US$ 131,338, and Singapore has US$ 139,593 (2025).

0255075100Singapore
  • Solid ring: usable or good evidence
  • Broken ring: thin evidence, opening further as confidence falls
  • The shaded band is the middle half of the set and the line inside it is the median.
  • Switzerland: 68.6
  • Singapore: 60.5
  • Netherlands: 54.6
  • Norway: 54.3
  • United States: 50.6
  • Sweden: 46.4
  • Austria: 44.2
  • Denmark: 42.3
  • Belgium: 32.6
  • Ireland: 25.4
  • United Arab Emirates: 18.0

What separates Singapore from its peers?

Singapore scores 60.5 on Experimentation, above the median of the 10 scored peers, which is 45.3.

Indicators placed above the peer median on the scale: resident patent applications, resident trademark applications, resident industrial design applications, new public software repositories, and tolerance of entrepreneurial failure.

Indicators placed below the peer median on the scale: early-stage entrepreneurial activity.

Each sentence compares one position with one median. Why a difference exists, and what to do about it, lie outside this data.

What this reading does not show

  • A national score is a coarse proxy. A capability forms in firms, cities, networks and groups below the level of the country, and a national average only describes the conditions they work in.
  • Peers share income and nothing else. Size, production structure, region and political regime are outside the rule, and a set of 10 countries can change with any revision to GDP.
  • An r reads the whole set at once and says nothing about one country alone. A correlation does not show a cause either.
  • The known artefacts that bear on Experimentation, described on the limits page: artefact A1.
  • And the ones every score in the benchmark carries: artefact A8, artefact A10.