Despite outperforming its peers in the Central and Southern Asian Region (CSA) and proving itself as innovation achiever in the lower-middle income category, India has slipped further to 81 in the list of Global Innovation Index (GII), compared to 76 in 2014.
The ranking consisted of 141 economies across the world on their innovation capacity and efficiency, using 79 indicators to gauge both innovative capabilities and measurable results.
India’s Performance:
- According to GII data, the input parameters in which India has consistently performed poorly during the last four years are political stability, ease of starting a business, slow pace of policy decision-making, tertiary inbound mobility, and environmental performance.
- India, along with China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Jordan, Kenya and Uganda, is part of a group of countries that are outperforming their economic peers, with India being one of the eight economies that can be signalled as innovation achievers outperforming their peers on overall score.
- As per the report, India’s strength lies in knowledge diffusion (ranked 34th), research & development (44th), general infrastructure (43rd) and investment (42nd). On innovation quality, it ranks 3rd among middle income countries, behind Brazil.
- On the other side, the country performs poorly on institutions (ranked 104th), infrastructure (87th), human capital and research (103rd), market sophistication (72nd), business sophistication (116th) and creative outputs (95th).
Other Key Facts:
- The GII study was published by Cornell University, INSEAD France and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
- Switzerland, UK, Sweden, The Netherlands and US are the world’s five most innovative nations.
About GII:
The GII is an annual publication which features, among others, a composite indicator that ranks countries/economies in terms of their enabling environment to innovation and their innovation outputs.
The index is basically calculated on the basis of how a country fares on seven key parameters – institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs.
Significance:
Despite falling five positions in the overall rankings since 2014, India, along with 10 other developing countries, is now categorised as innovation outperformers.
According to Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), this relative fall in India’s overall ranking this year is due to availability of old data up-to 2013-14 period and it does not truly reflect the performance of the economy in last one year. The new innovation policies put in place by the new Indian government are not yet effectively captured by the data used in the GII 2015.