iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
India has climbed to the 40th position in the Global Innovation Index 2022 by the World Intellectual Property Organization. This is a jump of 41 places during the last 7 years.
The Global Innovation Index 2022 announced by the World Intellectual Property Organization on Thursday, September 29, states that India along with Turkey has entered the top 40 for the first time. The Global Innovation Index 2022 (GII), in its 15th edition this year, is published by WIPO, in partnership with the Portulans Institute and with the support of Corporate Network partners: the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI), Ecopetrol (Colombia), and the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TİM).
While Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands are the world’s top 5 most-innovative economies, according to WIPO’s 2022 Global Innovation Index (GII), with China on the threshold of the top 10, “the other emerging economies are also showing consistently strong performance, including India and Turkey, both of which enter the top 40 for the first time.”
Soon after this announcement, Piyush Goyal, the Minister for Commerce and Industry said on Thursday that India had come a long way in the GII from the 81st spot in 2015 to the 40th spot in 2022. “We have also maintained 1st rank in ICT services exports over the years,” said Goyal while delivering a virtual message to mark the launch of the Global Innovation Index, 2022 by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
GII has established itself as a tool for governments across the world to gauge the efficacy and impact of their policies. “GII has over the years recognized India’s continuous rise due to the progressive measures taken by the government and industry,” Goyal added. He said that India now aspires to figure among the top 25 in the GII Index.
The report shows that research and development (R&D) and other investments that drive worldwide innovative activity continued to boom in 2021 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, but challenges are emerging in translating innovation investments into impact.
“With their rise in terms of innovation performance in the shadow of shocks to global supply chains, Turkey and India are positively enriching the global innovation landscape, while Indonesia shows promising innovation potential,” says GII Co-editor and Dean of the Saïd Business School at Oxford University, Soumitra Dutta. “Other regional champions like Chile and Brazil in Latin America, and South Africa and Botwana in Sub-Saharan Africa, have improved their relative innovation performance.”
WIPO Director, General Daren Tang, said: “This year’s GII finds that innovation is at a crossroads as we emerge from the pandemic. While innovation investments surged in 2020 and 2021, the outlook for 2022 is clouded not just by global uncertainties but by continued underperformance in innovation-driven productivity. This is why we need to pay more attention to not just investing in innovation, but how it translates into economic and social impact. Quality and value will become as critical to success as quantity and scale.”
In its annual ranking of the world’s economies on innovation capacity and output, the GII shows some key changes in the top 15 of the ranking, with the United States climbing to the 2nd position, the Netherlands reaching the 5th position, Singapore reaching 7th, Germany reaching 8th and China up one place to 11th and on the doorstep of the top 10.
Canada is back among the top 15 global innovators (15th). Turkey (37th) and India (40th) enter the top 40 for the first time. Beyond these, Vietnam (48), the Islamic Republic of Iran (53rd), and the Philippines (59th) are the middle-income economies with the fastest innovation performance growth to date.
“India is the innovation leader in the lower middle-income group. It continues to lead the world in ICT services exports and holds top rankings in other indicators, including venture capital receipt value, finance for startups and scaleups, graduates in science and engineering, labor productivity growth, and domestic industry diversification,” the GII 2022 states.
Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry said: “With innovation at the core of India’s growth story, the GII will be instrumental to shape policies and help design an actionable agenda for pursuing innovation excellence. This year’s GII theme on The Future of Innovation Productivity Stagnation or Revival is particularly relevant for India as we are experiencing significant transformations, from space technology and smart cities to health care and telecommunications, all driven by innovative solutions.”
Goyal added that as the importance of the ‘knowledge economy’ grows, innovation will lay the roadmap for development in India. “We have been working to strengthen Research & Development across sectors to make innovation our nation’s mission”, he added.
India has the 3rd largest start-up ecosystem and is home to over 100 unicorns, he asserted. “The start-up revolution has spread across India. Over half the start-ups are from remote small towns.”
