Pakistan behind Bhutan, Bangladesh in innovation: GII report

Pakistan is ranked 119 out of 128 countries, only followed by countries like Africa’s Burkina Faso, Nigeria and the war ravaged Middle Eastern country Yemen.

Also ranked lowest in the region, Pakistan is far behind India (66), Bhutan (96) and Sri Lanka (91). Even Bangladesh (117) is ahead of Pakistan.

Switzeland tops the ranking, followed by Sweden, UK and USA.

Co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, an agency of the United Nations), the Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation and provide the tools that can assist in tailoring policies to promote long-term output growth, improved productivity, and job growth.

THE GII Framework

Five input pillars capture elements of the national economy that enable innovative activities: (1) Institutions, (2) Human capital and research, (3) Infrastructure, (4) Market sophistication, and (5) Business sophistication.

#UAE first in the Arab World in terms of overall performance in the Global Innovation Index. @TheUAETRA pic.twitter.com/DkvIPHTwr5

— وزارة الطاقة | UAE (@UAE_Moenr) September 1, 2016

Two output pillars capture actual evidence of innovation outputs: (6) Knowledge and technology outputs and (7) Creative outputs.

Each pillar is divided into sub-pillars and each sub-pillar is composed of individual indicators (82 in total in 2016).

Sub-pillar scores are calculated as the weighted average of individual indicators; pillar scores are calculated as the weighted average of sub-pillar scores.

Four measures are then calculated:

Innovation Input Sub-Index: is the simple average of the first five pillar scores

Innovation Output Sub-Index is the simple average of the last two pillar scores

The overall GII score is the simple average of the Input and Output Sub-Indices

The Innovation Efficiency Ratio is the ratio of the Output Sub-Index over the Input Sub-Index

The GII gathers data from more than 30 sources, covering a large spectrum of innovation drivers and results; privileging hard data over qualitative assessments (only five survey questions were included in the GII 2016)

The framework is revised every year in a transparent exercise to improve the way innovation is measured.

The GII helps to create an environment in which innovation factors are continually evaluated.

It provides a key tool and a rich database of detailed metrics for economies, which in 2016 encompassed 128 economies, representing 92.8% of the world’s population and 97.9% of global GDP.