With India moving up 15 notches in the Global Innovation Index to the 66th position this year, from 81 in 2015, the government has decided to set up a panel on innovation to suggest ways to improve the country’s performance further.
The upward movement in ranking has come after five consecutive years of fall. The country was ranked 62nd in 2011
“We have to improve our performance for next year's ranking, and by doing this enable and facilitate an environment for promoting innovation in this country,” Commerce & Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said at the launch of the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2016 in New Delhi on Friday.
“ We will have a team to look at the challenges identified and advise the government on which direction to move to resolve the weaknesses, the Minister added.
The event was organised by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, NITI Aayog and industry body CII.
The annual index, released earlier this week by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, Cornell University, and business graduate school INSEAD, ranks economies on their innovation capabilities using more than 80 indicators such as education, R&D, patent filings, knowledge and technology inputs and institutions.
India held the 66th position, it bagged in 2016, way back in 2013. It had subsequently slipped 10 places in 2014 and five more in 2015.
Despite the continuous slip in the last five years and a partial spring-back this year, India remains 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.
WIPO Director-General Francis Gurry said: “I would like to congratulate India on how it has prioritised 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.”