20-Jan-2021: NITI Aayog Releases Second Edition of India Innovation Index
NITI Aayog, along with the Institute for Competitiveness, today released the second edition of the India Innovation Index in a virtual event. The report examines the innovation capabilities and performance of the states and union territories. The first edition of the index was launched in October 2019.
The India Innovation Index 2020was released by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar, in the presence of Member (Health) Dr. VK Paul, Member (Agriculture)Dr. Ramesh Chand, CEO Amitabh Kant, Adviser (Science and Technology) Neeraj Sinha, and Institute for Competitiveness Chair Dr Amit Kapoor.
The event was attended by Department of Scientific and Industrial Research Secretary Dr Shekhar C. Mande, Department of Biotechnology Secretary Dr Renu Swarup, Ministry of Earth Sciences Secretary Dr MN Rajeevan, Ministry of Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola, and Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Secretary Dr Kshatrapati Shivaji, among others.
In the second edition too, the index found that the level of competitiveness among the states and union territories was high, which is essential for them to continually improve on their enabling factors as well as innovation performance, year by year.
In the ‘Major States’ category, Karnataka continued to occupy the top position, while Maharashtra moved past Tamil Nadu to reach the second place. Telangana, Kerala, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab completed the top ten in that order. Karnataka’s rank is attributable to its substantive number of venture capital deals, registered geographical indicators and information and communications technology exports. Karnataka’s high Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow has also enhanced the innovation capabilities of the state. Four southern states—Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Kerala—occupied the top five spots under the ‘Major States’ category this year.
Overall, Delhi retained its first rank, while Chandigarh made a big leap since 2019 and landed in the second place this year. Under the ‘North-Eastern/Hill States’ category, Himachal Pradesh moved up from the second position to emerge as the top ranker this year, while 2019’s top performer (in this category), Sikkim, slipped down to the fourth position.
The innovation inputs were measured through five enabler parameters, and the output through two performance parameters. While ‘Human Capital’, ‘Investment’, ‘Knowledge Workers’, ‘Business Environment’, ‘Safety and Legal Environment’ were identified as enabler parameters, ‘Knowledge Output’ and ‘Knowledge Diffusion’ were chosen as the performance parameters.
During the event, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar said, ‘The India Innovation Index will create synergies between different stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem, thus enabling India to shift to competitive good governance.’ He also said the index is a great beginning to improve the innovation environment in the country. It is the right step towards making India the innovation leader of the world.
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said, ‘The India Innovation Index is a major step towards measuring innovation outcomes of states and facilitating optimal utilization of national and state mechanisms to realize the goal of an Aatmanirbhar Bharat.’
‘The index could be of vital significance to the states in identifying their innovation performance and initiating necessary policy interventions to leverage their unique strengths,’ said NITI Aayog Adviser Neeraj Sinha.
Dr Amit Kapoor, Chair, Institute for Competitiveness, said, ‘The index can help the Central and state governments to benchmark regional performance with respect to innovation, and provide policy insights on what needs to be done to improve and enhance it.’
The India Innovation Index aims to create an extensive framework for the continual evaluation of India’s innovation environment. The index aims to rank states and UTs based on their scores, recognize opportunities and challenges, and assist in tailoring government policies to foster innovation.
NITI Aayog, with its mandate of promoting ‘competitive federalism’ among all states and union territories, is committed to utilize the India Innovation Index in catalysing the innovation outcome of the nation.
The full document can be accessed here: https://niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2021-01/IndiaInnovationReport2020Book.pdf.
17-Oct-2019: NITI Aayog launches India Innovation Index 2019
NITI Aayog with Institute for Competitiveness as the knowledge partner released the India Innovation Index (III) 2019. Karnataka is the most innovative major state in India. Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Telangana, Haryana, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh form the remaining top ten major states respectively. The top ten major states are majorly concentrated in southern and western India. Sikkim and Delhi take the top spots among the north- eastern & hill states, and union territories/city states/small states respectively. Delhi, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh are the most efficient states in translating inputs into output.
Dr. Rajiv Kumar expressed hope that “the India Innovation Index would create synergies between different stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem and India would shift to competitive good governance.” Shri Amitabh Kant added that “India has a unique opportunity among its myriad challenges to become the innovation leader in the world.” Renu Swarup said, “cluster-based innovation should be leveraged upon as the focal point of competitiveness.” Shri Ashutosh Sharma said, “The index is a great beginning to improve the environment of innovation in the country as it focuses on both the input and output components of the idea.” Shri Vaidya Kotecha said, “The index is a good effort to benchmark the performance of the state with each other and promote competitive federalism.”
The study examines the innovation ecosystem of Indian states and union territories. The aim is to create a holistic tool which can be used by policymakers across the country to identify the challenges to be addressed and strengths to build on when designing the economic growth policies for their regions. The states have been bifurcated into three categories: major states, north-east, and hill states, and union territories/city states/small states.
Background: Recognizing the role of innovation as a key driver of growth and prosperity for India, NITI Aayog with Institute for Competitiveness as the knowledge partner has released the India Innovation Index 2019. The study is an outcome of extensive research and analysis, which looks holistically at the innovation landscape of India by examining the innovation capabilities and performance of Indian states and union territories. The aim is to create a holistic tool which can be used by policymakers across the country to identify the challenges to be addressed and strengths to build on when designing the economic growth policies for their regions.
The index attempts to create an extensive framework for the continual evaluation of the innovation environment of 29 states and seven union territories in India and intends to perform the following three functions- 1) ranking of states and UTs based on their index scores, 2) recognizing opportunities and challenges, and 3) assisting in tailoring governmental policies to foster innovation.
The India Innovation Index 2019 is calculated as the average of the scores of its two dimensions - Enablers and Performance. The Enablers are the factors that underpin innovative capacities, grouped in 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, divided in two pillars: (6) Knowledge Output and (7) Knowledge Diffusion.
The index presents the latest findings and highlights the regional catalysts and caveats for promoting innovation readiness. The Report offers a comprehensive snapshot of the innovation ecosystem of 29 states and seven union territories. It also includes a section on state profiles covering 33 indicators looking at the different facets of innovation in India.
The index shows that the innovation ecosystem of the country is strong in south and western parts of India. In fact, three of the top five major states are from southern India. Delhi and Haryana seem to be an exception to this rule and seem to be doing well on the Index. Thus, there seems to be a west-south and north-east divide across the country.
The states have been bifurcated into three categories: major states, north-east and hill states, and union territories / city states / small states. Karnataka is the leader in the overall rankings in the category of major states. Karnataka’s number one position in the overall ranking is partly attributed to its top rank in the Performance dimension. It is also among the top performers in Infrastructure, Knowledge Workers, Knowledge Output and Business Environment.
Among the category of major states, 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.
The broad level learnings and some policy imperatives at the national level include increasing the spending on research and development, improving the capability of top rung educational institutions in the country to produce greater innovation outputs. There is also a need for greater coordination and collaboration between the industry and educational institutions for enhancing innovation capability. A collaborative platform consisting of all the stakeholders of innovation - innovators, researchers, and investors from the industry should be developed. This will help in strengthening the industry-academia linkages and will ease the process of technology transfer by providing a platform for innovators to showcase their inventions.
At the state level, broad level key learning includes forming policies at the state level that seek to improve the innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Cluster development programs are also an area in need of greater coordination and can benefit from a more open collaborative approach. Also, the industrial policies at the state level should focus more on innovation. At present only a few policies exist for innovation even in the most innovative states and union territories.
2-Feb-2017: India Innovation Index a joint initiative of NITI Aayog, DIPP and CII launched.
To make India an innovation-driven economy, NITI Aayog, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) together launched a mega initiative “India Innovation Index” that will rank states on Innovations through country’s first online innovation index portal that will capture data on innovation from all Indian states on innovation and regularly update it in real time.
The India Innovation Index Framework will be structured based on the best practices followed in Global Innovation Index (GII) indicators and additionally by adding India-centric parameters those truly reflect the Indian innovation ecosystem. This initiative will be the point of reference for all international agencies to collect India’s up to date data points for global indices and analytic.
Inaugurating the portal, Mr Amitabh Kant, CEO NITI Aayog said, “This portal will be a first-of-its-kind online platform where Global Innovation Index indicators and India–centric data from various states will be coalesced and disseminated and updated periodically. This will be a one-stop data warehouse and will track progress on each indicator at the National level and the State level on real-time basis. The access to this portal will be hosted on the NITI Aayog website, and NITI Aayog will update this data periodically.”
Mr. Kant said, “I would like to congratulate Confederation of Indian Industry for creating the Global Innovation Index a decade ago and the World Intellectual Property, Cornell University for working together to further develop it and make it a global consulting document for policymakers around the world.”
Data collated on this portal will not only be used to ameliorate current data gaps w.r.t the GII, but be the prime source for the India Innovation Index, which will be jointly developed by NITI Aayog, DIPP and CII, in consultation with World Economic Forum, the World Intellectual Property Organization, Cornell University, OECD, UNIDO, ILO, UNESCO, ITU and others with the objective to rank Indian states as per their innovation prowess and provide impetus to them to build their respective innovation ecosystems and spur the innovation spirit among institutions and people.
The Global Innovation Index (GII), co-published by World-Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Cornell University and INSEAD with CII as a Knowledge Partner since inception, has been ranking world economies including India since 2007 according to their innovation capabilities and outcomes using 82 indicators among a host of other important parameters. It has established itself as both a leading reference on innovation and a ‘tool for action’ for policy makers.
India currently ranks 66th out of 128 countries on the Global innovation Index (GII) 2016. To improve India’s rank in GII and other international indices, NITI Aayog jointly with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), organized the Global Innovation Index – India Roundtable on 31st January in the capital.
Mr. Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Government of India said, “GII gives us an opportunity to look at innovation and to rethink about our progress. This also gives an opportunity to compare with the best in the world, to look at best practices around and then learn from them. DIPP has formed a taskforce on innovation with representation from industry, academia and government, through this taskforce we are trying to improve our GII ranking.”
Speaking at the inaugural session, Mr. Ratan P. Watal, Principal Adviser, NITI Aayog said, “Regulation, fiscal incentives and R&D plays a major role in driving innovation. A lot of money is provided for R&D but unfortunately R&D money goes in silos within various government departments giving no result. Scientific departments, departments which deal with such budgets and CII have to come together and work towards it”.
The event was a first-of-its-kind intensive consultation exercise conducted by the government to solicit inputs from key stakeholders of the innovation ecosystem in India and abroad such as Ministry of Commerce, Department of Science & Technology, TRAI and top global agencies such as WIPO, Cornell University, World Economic Forum, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, International Telecommunications Union, International Labour Organisation to identify and understand issues and challenges related to it. This exercise was aimed at addressing India's data gaps by adopting international methodologies on critical innovation indicators at the input and output side.