India Innovation Index 2019

Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, Ayush; Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, Department of Science; Amit Kapoor, Chairman, Institute for Competitiveness; Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog; Renu Swarup, Secretary, Department of Bio Technology; Neeraj Sinha, NITI Aayog

The India Innovation Index 2019 comes at a time when Innovation is a subject matter of significant concern for policymakers in the country. With India among the fastest growing economies in the world, the next big challenge is to sustain that level of growth for a longer period of time. Ensuring future economic growth will require solutions that are more creative than any we have seen so for. The increasing role that innovation plays in acceleration economic growth and enhancing competitiveness is evident. This understanding of the importance of innovation readiness has brought prosperity and better living standards in the West.

The index will not only lead to healthy competition among the states in terms of boosting their innovative capacities, but also strengthen the bonds of cooperative federalism with states learning from one another to improve their innovative outcomes.
Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog

The challenges faced by India due to its pluralistic society and a rapidly growing population are vastly different than the West. With a population of over 1.3 billion, which keeps on growing at 1.1% a year — India faces scarcity on a large scale across the board: from water and food to oil and gas and to primary education and basic health care. To overcome these challenges India must transform itself from a factor-driven to an innovation-driven economy by efficiently using its existing resources and in turn become a global innovation hub. To be successful in this endeavor, the country must make the right institutional, industrial, and policy reforms.

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, have brought out the India Innovation Index and Report. The Report evaluates the progress of innovation readiness in states and union territories, highlighting the obstacles that deter governments, businesses, and individuals from fully capturing the benefits of innovation.

The index examines both the conduciveness of the state environment to foster innovation and the results of its innovative practices. The index will be useful to states and union territories by benchmarking their performance against their peers to understand reasons for differential performance and devise better strategies towards creating an environment which fosters innovation.
Shri. Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog

A multi-stage iterative process was followed to reach the most accurate framework for the India Innovation Index. The first stage involved interactions between NITI Aayog and the knowledge partners to develop a pillar level framework for the Index. The second stage involved identifying all possible sets of innovation metrics that are relevant to the Indian setting. The third step involved engagement with key experts and stakeholders to solicit feedback and validation.

India Innovation Index measures innovation inputs through ‘enablers’ and innovation output as ‘performance.’ Four enabler pillars capture elements of the state economy that act as inputs to innovation environment: Human Capital, Investment, Knowledge Employment, Business Environment, and Safety & Legal Environment. Two performance pillars- Knowledge Output and Knowledge Diffusion- capture the performance.

The Index intends to perform two functions: to help in better understanding of a state’s innovation ranking and relative performance by incorporating key indicators relating to six pillars that can be used to understand the performance of a state with regards to innovation capabilities and helping empower states to improve their innovation policies while leveraging their strengths and overcoming challenges.

The India Innovation Index is another of the initiative launched by NITI Aayog to analyse the innovation ecosystem at the sub-national level across the nation. The aim is to strengthen the innovation ecosystem and give the boost to the development of innovation-led entrepreneurship in India
VK Saraswat

The India Innovation Index Report 2019 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. Also included in the Report is a section on state profiles covering over 30 indicators looking at the different facets of innovation in India. We expect that the Report will come to be recognized as a benchmarking instrument and an invaluable tool for facilitating public-private dialogue, whereby policymakers, business leaders, and other stakeholders can evaluate progress on a continual basis.