India Innovation Index

News:NITI Aayog with Institute for Competitiveness as the knowledge partner has released the India Innovation Index 2019.

Facts:

About India innovation index:

• The index examines the innovation ecosystem of Indian states and union territories. 
• The index has been developed on the lines of the Global Innovation Index(GII).It is expected to help the innovation ecosystem of Indian states and Union Territories(UTs) to design policies to drive innovation across regions.
• The index performs the following three functions (a) ranking of states and UTs based on their index scores (b)recognizing opportunities and challenges and (c) assisting in tailoring governmental policies to foster innovation.

Parameters:

The Index is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions – Enablers and Performance.

• The Enablers are the factors that underpin innovative capacities.They are grouped into five pillars: (1) Human Capital (2) Investment (3) Knowledge Workers (4) Business Environment and (5) Safety and Legal Environment.
• The Performance dimension captures benefits that a nation derives from the inputs.It is divided into two pillars (6) Knowledge Output and (7) Knowledge Diffusion.

Key takeaways from the index:

• The index has bifurcated the states into three categories (a)major states, (b)north-east and hill states and (c)union territories/city states/small states.
• There is a west-south and north-east divide across the country.The top ten major states are majorly concentrated in southern and western India.
• Karnataka has emerged topper in the overall rankings in the category of major states with Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in the second and third positions.
• Karnataka’s top position is partly attributed to its top rank in the Performance dimension.
• Maharashtra performs the best in the dimension of Enablers.This implies that it has the best enabling environment for innovation even though the state comes in at the third position in the overall innovation index.
• Among the North-Eastern states and Union territories,Sikkim and Delhi occupy the top spots respectively.
• Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient states in translating inputs into output.
• Bihar, Jharkhand, and Punjab were the least attractive states for investment.

Additional information:

About GII:

• The global innovation index (GII) is an annual ranking that quantifies the state of national innovation ecosystem across countries. In 2019, it has ranked 129 countries based on 80 indicators.
• The GII is co-published by World intellectual property organisation (WIPO), Cornell University and INSEAD.
• India has improved its ranking by five places to 52nd in 2019 from 57th position in 2018. India has also outperformed on innovation relative to its GDP per capita for nine consecutive years.