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 66^th 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 31^st 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-kindintensiveconsultation 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.