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.