India moves 4 position up in Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020, makes it to top 50 economies for the first time

India has for the first time made it to the top 50 countries in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020 released on Wednesday.

India has moved up four positions since 2019 to become the third-most innovative lower-middle-income economy in the world, according to the report. India, at 48, also retains the highest rank in the central and southern Asia region.

India ranks in the top 15 in indicators such as information and communications technology (ICT) services exports, government online services, graduates in science and engineering, and research and development (R&D)-intensive global companies.

The report has attributed the improvement to universities, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology in Bombay and Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, besides its top scientific publications, stating that India is the lower middle-income economy with the highest innovation quality.

Switzerland is the world’s most-innovative economy followed by Sweden, the US, the UK, and the Netherlands, according to GII 2020. The two economies in North America, the US and Canada, rank in the top 20 in this year’s GII.

The covid-19 crisis hit the innovation landscape at a time when innovation was flourishing, the report pointed out. In 2018, R&D spending grew by 5.2%, significantly faster than global gross domestic product (GDP) growth, after rebounding strongly from the financial crisis of 2008-09. Venture capital and the use of intellectual property (IP) were at an all-time high.

The GII 2020 theme was Who Will Finance Innovation? One of the GII findings was that the money to fund innovative ventures was drying up. VC deals are in a decline across North America, Asia and Europe.

The impact of this shortage in innovation finance will be uneven, with the negative effects felt more heavily by early-stage VCs, by R&D-intensive startups, and in countries that are not typically VC hotspots. The report, which is in its 13th edition this year, is co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The index reviews 131 countries and their economy profiles, including data, strengths and weaknesses.

The report highlighted that the covid-19 crisis has already catalyzed innovation in many new and traditional sectors, such as health, education, tourism and retail.

The geography of innovation continues to shift, the GII 2020 showed. Over the years, India, China, the Philippines, and Vietnam are the economies with the most significant progress in their GII innovation ranking over time. All four are now in the top 50.

The top-performing economies in the GII are still almost exclusively from the high-income group, with China (at 14th spot) remaining the only middle-income economy in the GII top 30.