Imo focus on output of new technologies.

I can see flaws in that potential approach too. For example, if a country has high R&D investment/capacity, but most manufacturing or commercialisation activities happen abroad, then simply measuring output of new technologies doesn't account for the R&D.

Using the Bloomberg list, Austria ranks 12th overall, but 5th on R&D. Their figure is dragged down by a 26th rank in High-Tech Density. Then, Germany's High-Tech density is ranked 3rd overall. Perhaps one could hypothesise that much of Austria's R&D effort ends up commercialised in Germany.

Yeah that's a good point. You can look at where a company is incorporated, but they still may do R&D in different parts of the world. Could be resolved by taking the "new technologies output" of a company, but then dividing it to each country it does R&D in with proportion to the cost of that R&D.