New Delhi, Jan.7 (ANI): The Second Global Innovation Index 2008 (GII) jointly published by Confederation of Indian Industry and INSEAD Business School, has once again placed United States at the top of the Global Innovation Rankings. India, on the other hand, is ranked a lowly 41.

The GII that has studied 130 countries has ranked Germany in the second position, followed by Sweden, the United Kingdom and Singapore.

The European economies including the Nordic ones continued to do well in 2008. Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands figured in the top 10 apart from Germany, Sweden and UK that figure in the top 5. However, France was the biggest loser slipping from the 5th to 19th position.

Singapore and South Korea are two Asian countries figuring in the top 10. However, Japan has slipped to the 9th position from the 4th and India its last year”s ranking of 23rd to the 41st position. With China ranked at 37th, most BRIC countries have been ranked lower than last time. Israel and Qatar from West Asia and Middle East find places in the top 25. There are other countries from the Middle East just below this quartile.

The GII results have revealed that innovation is correlated with income levels in a country. For example, the innovation levels in the OECD countries are much more than non-OECD countries. There are few countries from Africa that are included in the rankings with only South Africa coming in at the 43rd position.

Over the years, through its own research, INSEAD has examined the many factors enabling national economies to achieve sustained and higher innovation capabilities. The goal has been to provide benchmarking tools for business leaders and policymakers to identify obstacles to improved innovation and competitiveness and stimulate discussion on strategies to
overcome them.

This time and earlier in 2007, INSEAD based its innovation analysis on the Global Innovation Index (GII) and Framework,
a highly comprehensive index for measuring global innovation, which captures the microeconomic and macroeconomic parameters and variables.

CII has over the years, taken a pioneering role in building a culture of innovation in Indian industry and society. It is CII”s belief that the only way for Indian industry to have sustainable and inclusive growth is to adopt innovation as a business strategy. With this belief, a number of initiatives have been taken by CII in the area of innovation. To make
a successful plan and roadmap for action, there is a need for India to align the measurement gauge with similar benchmark practices adopted globally.

Innovation is no longer restricted to the vertical structures of R and D laboratories and universities. Therefore an approach that goes beyond the number of patents registered, number of articles published in research journals and percentage of GDP spending on R and D measuring innovation is needed. This is the key assumption behind the approach used in this study.

The GII while arriving at the results has made a distinction between inputs and outputs while measuring innovation in an economy. Inputs are aspects that enable an economy to stimulate innovative and outputs are the results of innovative activities within the economy. The input pillars include Institutions and Policies, Human Capacity, General and ICT
Infrastructure, Market Sophistication and Business Sophistication.

The output pillars that provide evidence of the results of innovation within the economy are Knowledge Creation, Competitiveness and Wealth Creation.

The data for the GII was collected from reputed international organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and the International Telecommunications Union. In particular, a combination of qualitative and quantitative data is used for the computation of the GII. The qualitative data is obtained from the Executive Opinion Survey, a global CEO survey conducted by the World Economic Forum. (ANI)