Competitiveness Assessment of OPEC Members: with an Emphasis on Innovation-driven Components

Competitiveness is an issue that in recent decade has shifted the attention of many researchers and policymakers to its side. In today''s world of expanding globalization، countries are employing all their efforts and use all of their capacities to be able to gain more shares of international markets by improving the competitiveness. Among the factors that increase the competitiveness of the countries، the basic needs indicators، efficiency-driven and innovation-driven can be noted that all of them have been considered in Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum as one of the most reliable sources of competitiveness at the national level. In this paper، we try to investigate the status of overall index of competitiveness and innovation and basic factors influencing the competitiveness among OPEC members according to the Global Competitiveness Report 2010-2011. The results show that the state of competitiveness among countries is not so appropriate، also it should be noted that their competitive power is largely dependent on infrastructure and macroeconomic environment which themselves function from oil exports and foreign exchange revenues. Beside، the innovation components of their competitiveness are poor. Thus، it should be noted that the economic decision- makers in these countries are recommended to push their competitive power toward relying on innovation-driven components which have more flexibility and seek higher value-added for them.