Special Features
UAE Becomes First In MENA Region In Support Of Innovative Standards
Iceland, Sweden and Hong Kong lead the rankings of the Global Innovation Index (GII) Report 2009-2010, released by INSEAD, the leading international business school, and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Qatar were placed as the top three from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Among the best innovators from last year, USA (eleven), UK (fourteen), Germany (sixteen) have fallen in ranks.This year’s Report underlines the importance of innovation in country competitiveness and growth particularly at a time when the global economy is recovering from one of the worst financial crises of the past half century.
Soumitra Dutta, Roland Berger Professor of Business and Technology at INSEAD and the architect of the study and the framework, said "The results of this year’s study re-emphasises 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 year’s Report is again sponsored by Canon India. Launched first by INSEAD in 2007 and published for the third time with a record coverage of 132 economies worldwide, accounting for over 96% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 91% of the global population, the Report is one of the most comprehensive international assessments of the impact of innovation on competitiveness and growth.
Of the 132 countries, the MENA region was well represented; a total of 15 MENA countries made it on the Report. The UAE led in first place, achieving a GII rank of 24th place compared to last year’s position of 26th, Kuwait ranked 33rd, Qatar at 35th, Bahrain at 40th, followed by Saudi Arabia at 54th place.
The study and the methodology have evolved over the last three years. In this report, some changes have been introduced to give it a more holistic outlook. The traditional approach to measure innovation has been to look at parameters like patents per million of population, publication of scientific journals, research and development expenditure, and so on. This report goes beyond this and adds other parameters that capture innovation in emerging markets and the effects of innovation on social welfare.
Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman of CII-National Committee on Technology & Innovation and Chairman & CEO, HCL Infosystems Ltd., mentioned that the Report evaluates the progress of innovation readiness in countries, highlighting the obstacles that prevent governments, businesses, and individuals from fully capturing the benefits of innovation.
The Global Innovation Index (GII), featured in the Report, examines how countries benefit through innovation through the use of ’enablers’ that stimulate innovation and outputs that are the results of innovation activities. There are five enabler pillars including Institutions, Human Capacity, General and ICT Infrastructure, Market Sophistication and Business Sophistication and two output pillars of Scientific Outputs and Creative Outputs and Well-Being.
The study uses a mixture of hard data collected by well-respected international organizations, 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. 36 out of the 60 composing variables are hard, quantitative data, collected from the former international organisations.
Kensaku Konishi, President ’&’ CEO, Canon India Private Limited, said, "With increasing number of countries and industries adopting innovation, the discussion now focuses not on if, but on how best we can get the optimum results to maximise the benefits to business and society." This year’s GII Report 2009/10 is broadly divided into several parts. The first consists of messages and the preface; the second is the detailed analysis; the third part consists of the rankings of the 132 countries; the fourth section comprises country profiles of those that have been surveyed and ranked and finally, there are the data tables.
