Sweden and Hong Kong are second and third in the Global Innovation Index 2009-2010, which is complied by INSEAD with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), and the sponsorship of the electronics company Canon. Switzerland is in the fourth position, Denmark fifth, Finland sixth, Singapore seventh, Netherlands eighth, New Zealand ninth and Norway tenth.
Soumitra Dutta, professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD and the architect of the study, said the results, “Re-emphasise the crucial need for countries to focus on directed pro-innovation policies to jumpstart growth in the medium-term and lead to development in the long term.”
This is the third year the study has been carried out and some changes have been introduced to make it more comprehensive. The traditional approach to measuring innovation uses metrics such as patents per million of population, papers in scientific journals, citation rates, research and development expenditure, and so on.
The INSEAD report includes parameters that aim to capture innovation in emerging markets and the effects of innovation on social welfare.
Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman of CII’s National Committee on Technology & Innovation and who is Chairman and CEO of HCL Infosystems Ltd, says the report evaluates the progress in developing “innovation readiness” in countries, highlighting the obstacles that prevent governments, businesses, and individuals from fully capturing the benefits of innovation.
The report considers enabling factors that stimulate innovation, and outputs that are the results of innovation activities. The five enabling factors are, Institutions, Human Capacity, General and ICT Infrastructure, Market Sophistication and Business Sophistication; and two output factors are Scientific Outputs and Creative Outputs and Well-Being.
The study uses a mixture of hard data collected by international organisations, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations, and the World Bank, and survey data from the Executive Opinion Survey, conducted annually by the World Economic Forum in each of the economies covered by the report.
Kensaku Konishi, President and CEO of Canon in India, noted that an increasing number of countries are putting innovation at the heart of their economic strategies. “The discussion now focuses not on if, but on how best, we can get the optimum results so as to maximise the benefits to business and society.”
Iceland is in need of some cheer and the report provides this, saying the country’s clean energy, strong infrastructure, well-educated workforce and marine resources provide the economy a strong base which makes it the leader in innovation.
The US meanwhile has slipped from number one last year, to eleventh place this. The report says that even as its economy is showing early signs of economic recovery, other countries are fast developing as centres of learning and knowledge and clusters of science and technology. The US is ranked second in terms of Business Sophistication, third for Market Sophistication and fifth for Human Capacity, but is twelfth in ICT and Uptake of Infrastructure, fourteenth in Scientific Outputs and eighteenth in terms of both its Institutions and Creative Outputs and Well being.
To download the full report, consult additional highlights, country profiles and rankings, see: http://www.globalinnovationindex.org
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