India improves its ranking in global innovations

India showed improvement in its innovation ranking in Global Innovation Index (GII) in 2016 – a marked improvement after being on a downward trajectory for five years continuously.

Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Finland and Singapore led this year’s rankings, released jointly by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) AT Kearney and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

India also ranked first in Central and Southern Asia region. It maintained its top place in the Central and Southern Asia region, advancing 15 spots. It also overtook Brazil (ranked 69th) in the middle-income economies. The country also ranked among the top 50 economies overall in two pillars: Market sophistication (33rd) and Knowledge and technology outputs (43rd)

India’s positive move is the result of its performance in university rankings, where it comes in second among middle-income economies and 20th overall; and third in patent families among middle-income economies and 37th overall. Dr Bruno Lanvin, INSEAD executive director for Global Indices and co-editor of GII 2016, says GII rankings are based on a seven-pillar model. Five for inputs are: Institutions, human and capital research, infrastructure, market sophistication and business sophistication. Two pillars for outputs are knowledge & technology and creative outputs.

In the case of India, Dr Lanvin adds, significant progress has been made in the domain of ‘innovation quality’, which includes the quality of universities.