NITI Aayog, WIPO Hold Workshop to Improve India’s Ranking in Global Innovation Index

New Delhi, India – NITI Aayog and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a virtual workshop with stakeholder ministries and departments to improve India’s ranking in the Global Innovation Index (GII). NITI Aayog is the Government of India’s nodal department for improving India’s performance in the GII. It has taken a number of steps in this regard, including the formation of an inter-ministerial committee chaired by Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, and regular interactions with top-ranking countries in the index in order to understand and adopt their best practices. The workshop is the result of a decision made at one of the committee meetings.

India has been an ‘Innovation Achiever’ for 11 years in a row, producing more innovation output than it invests in innovation. While India ranked 46th overall (two spots higher than in 2020), it ranked first among ten Central and Southern Asian economies and second among 34 lower-middle-income economies in the 2021 edition. Another key finding of the index report was that India’s performance is outperforming expectations for its level of development in terms of GDP.

During the workshop, Kant stressed that “Our policies aim to transform India into a vibrant ecosystem for innovators by encouraging new businesses, attracting global talent and investments, and undertaking socially conscious cutting-edge research.” Dr Marco M Aleman, Assistant Director-General, WIPO, agreed and congratulated India on consistently improving its performance and said, “This showed that the country’s policies were indeed proving to be productive in improving innovation.”

While delivering the opening remarks in the inaugural session of the workshop, Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, said, “The nations of the world that seek to become a hotbed of innovation, like India, find the Global Innovation Index an indispensable tool to guide the formulation, implementation, and monitoring of policies. In particular, innovation is the key for growth and development in emerging economies.”

Emphasizing the importance of emerging technologies in the growth of innovation, Dr VK Saraswat, NITI Aayog Member (Science and Technology), stated, “Innovation has been acquiring a significant dimension of creating real value across various sectors, with emerging technologies such as cloud computing, Internet of Things, energy storage, robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. These technologies have led to the rise of an innovation economy.”

In his presentation on the conceptual framework of the index and its ranking mechanism, Dr Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, Co-Editor, GII, explained, “A core benefit of the GII is that it positions data-based evidence and metrics at the core of evaluating, crafting, and deploying innovation policies. It brings together stakeholders to understand innovation performance and enables leveraging domestic innovation opportunities.”

Neeraj Sinha, Senior Adviser, NITI Aayog, highlighted the importance of having up-to-date data at the point of collection by WIPO. (The relevant ministries and departments are required to take the necessary action by March 31, 2022.)

Image Source: Magic Wand Media

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