Comment by Epa095

Although in a global world, it's not clear that it's best for a country to focus on getting the absolute best, IF if means the average suffers from it. There is value in being the best, but for the economy it's also important to have enough good enough people to utilise the new technology/science(which gets imported from abroad), and they don't need to be the absolute best.

As a bit of a caricature example, if cancer is completely cured tomorrow, it's not necessarily the country inventing the cure which will be cancer free first, but the one with the most doctors able to use and administer the cure.