This game compares patent application intensity relative to national R&D spending.

• The figure divides resident patent applications per million people by R&D expenditure as a share of GDP.
• It is a rough output-to-input ratio, not a clean return-on-investment score.
• Countries can spend heavily on science that does not patent often, while others channel applied research and industrial strategy into filings fast.

R&D does not all want the same thing, which is why yield ratios can be provocative and a little unfair in equal measure.