By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, AUG 20, 2016: INDIA has improved its innovation ranking in GII to reach 66 th position from its last year's rank of 81 st, this improvement in the rank for India comes after 5 years of continuous drop in its ranking. Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Finland and Singapore lead the 2016 rankings in the Global Innovation Index, released jointly by Cornell University, INSEAD,  World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) AT Kearney and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Speaking at the launch function jointly organized by NITI Aayog, DIPP and CII in the capital yesterday, Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry informed that “A team to be formed to look into results of the Global Innovation Index to understand the challenges related to India and advise the Govt on Next step”.  

Along with its innovation performance India's innovation ranking is driven by methodological considerations, such as the addition of new indicators. Relative to GDP, India performs well above the line of the level of development. Among its income group (lower-middle income) it ranks 6th and in its region (Central and Southern Asia) it ranks 1st.

India has shown a downward trajectory during the period of 2013-2015 in its ranking for inputs and outputs. This year, however, the rank in both inputs and outputs has increased significantly, reaching its best performance for the inputs over the 4 year period. The relative downturn of India's Innovation Efficiency Ratio (63 rd) happened due to significant increase in Innovation inputs (which remained weak in previous years) with respect to its output (efficiency is the ratio between innovation output and innovation input). India ranks 3rd and 1st in its region (Central and Southern Asia) in the Innovation Input and Output Sub-Indices, respectively.

India, 66th, is the top-ranked economy in Central and Southern Asia, showing particular strengths in tertiary education and R&D, including global R&D intensive firms, the quality of its universities and scientific publications, its market sophistication and ICT service exports where it ranks first in the world. India also over-performs in innovation relative to its GDP. It ranks second on innovation quality amongst middle-income economies, overtaking Brazil. Relative weaknesses exist in the indicators for business environment, education expenditures, new business creations and the creative goods and services production.

“The commitment of India to innovation and improved innovation metrics is strong and growing, helping to improve the innovation environment.  This trend will help gradually lift India closer to other top-ranked innovation economies”, says Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Innovation requires continuous investment. Before the 2009 crisis, research and development (R&D) expenditure grew at an annual pace of approximately 7%. GII 2016 data indicate that global R&D grew by only 4% in 2014. This was a result of slower growth in emerging economies and tighter R&D budgets in high-income economies – this remains a source of concern.

“Investing in innovation is critical to raising long-term economic growth,” said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry, “I would like to congratulate the Government of India on how it has prioritized innovation in its development strategy. In the GII, India performs better than other countries at a similar level of economic development. India also shows outstanding strengths in innovation factors such as the number of graduates in science and engineering, the quality of its scientific publications and the quality of its universities”.

Top Rankings

Among the GII 2016 leaders, four economies — Japan, the U.S., the UK, and Germany— stand out in “innovation quality,” a top-level indicator that looks at the caliber of universities, number of scientific publications and international patent filings. China moves to 17th place in innovation quality, making it the leader among middle-income economies for this indicator, followed by India which has overtaken Brazil.

Soumitra Dutta, Dean, Cornell College of Business, and co-editor of the report, points out that “Investing in improving innovation quality is essential for closing the innovation divide. While institutions create an essential supportive framework for doing so, economies need to focus on reforming education and growing their research capabilities to compete successfully in a rapidly changing globalized world.”

GII 2016 Theme: “Winning with Global Innovation”

The GII theme this year is “Winning with Global Innovation.” The report explores the rising share of innovation carried out via globalized innovation networks, findi