Belarus stepped 19 positions up in Global Innovation Index 2014

Global Innovation Index 2014 (GII) has recently been calculated. This time for 143 countries. It is necessary to underline, that the Index calculations has been done 7th time in a row by Cornell University, business school INSEAD Рё World Intellectual Property Organization, (WIPO).
WIPO partners took part in the research preparation as well: Indian Industry Confederation (CII), chinese company «Huawei» representatives and members of the advisory council, consisting of 14 independent international experts. After that these studies have been published in a separate report The Human Factor in Innovation”.
The summary Global Innovation Index 2014 gives analysts and potential investors an opportunity to get a general concept about innovation process condition, both worldwide and in a particular country from the list.Please note that GII is calculated as multiple estimates weighted sum of two large groups of related indicators. These are: disposable resources and Innovation Input conditions и results obtained from Innovation Output. The first group includes such notions as institutes, human capital and researches, infrastructure, the internal market development and business development. The second one includes technology and the knowledge economy development, as well as the results of creative human activity.So long as WIPO experts analyzed human factor and role more thoroughly in the innovation process this year, as the main conclusion of the report they underlined that today both business бизнес and all states’ governments have consistently demonstrated a growing interest in stimulating creative activity of the population. Therefore, in this context, they have analyzed different aspects of the human capital necessary for the practical implementation of the innovation.
As for the advanced achievements, such developed countries as Switzerland, the UK and Sweden led the current GII rating as the three world leaders with absolute values of 64.8, 62.4 and 62.3, respectively. Switzerland tops the WIPO list the fourth year in a row.

The remarkable thing is that top-20 includes such European states as Ireland, Germany, Norway, Iceland and Austria. So Europe can be called the world “trendsetter” in the innovation economy. In the WIPO research it is pointed out that all the leading countries enumerated above were able to achieve high performance GII, first of all , due to significant investments in the development of human capital combined with extensive in these countries of modern information and communication infrastructure. Besides, all the named countries have permanently high rates and specific series in most of the analyzed parameters. Among high income countries one can exemplify USA, being a the undisputed world leader in such indicators as the achievements in the field of higher education, the number of academic publications and the number of international patent applications.Then follows Japan, Germany and Switzerland. A middle-income group from the point of view of these indicators China’s leading, followed by the Brazil. If to speak about the general rank table among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), almost all of them stepped up in GII rating, except for India, which has moved 10 places down (position 76). Upon that, China stepped 6 positions up, (position 29), the Russian Federation climbed 13 positions up and occupies position 49, Brazil climbed three positions up and took position 61, while South Africa has moved 5 positions up, occupying eventually position 53.

Belarus rating position
As for the Republic’s achievements, according to WIPO estimate, this year our country was ranked 58 with GII 37.1.

A year ago the Republic took position 77 with GII 34.62. Thus, we can observe our country climbing 19 positions up. This is certainly an encouraging fact. Nevertheless, we can’t but notice some very much alike countries ahead of us: Mongolia (position 56, GII 37.5), Romania (position 55, 38.1), Russia (position 49, 39.1), Poland (position 45, 40.6), Bulgaria (position 44, 40.7), Moldova (position 43, 40.7), Croatia (position 42, 40.7) Lithuania (position 39, 41.0), Slovakia (position 37, 41.9), Hungary (position 35, 44.6), Latvia (position 34, 44.8), Slovenia (position 28, 47.2), Czech Republic (position 26, 50.2) and Estonia (position 24, 51.5).
From the other hand, it is necessary to remind, that about a year ago according to the international consulting agency Bloomberg estimate Belarus joined the list of the fifty most innovative countries in the world. However, today these positions have been lost, since this year the Bloomberg experts set position 60 for Belarus . Despite the fact that it may seem surprising to some readers, but today position 49, that used to belong to Belarus, is occupied by our southern neighbour, Ucraine. According to Bloomberg, among our closest region neighbors that left Belarus behind are are Russia (position 18), Czech Republic (23), Poland (24), Slovenia (31), Romania (37), Estonia (39), Latvia (41) Bulgaria (42), Croatia (43), Lithuania (44) and Slovakia (46). And many of them have improved their positions. Unfortunately, last year Belarus moved 11 positions backwards.
Recapitulation
It is out of the question that to support innovation “tone” in the Belarusian economy at the proper level, the government needs to work in this direction constantly, to identify quickly all the priorities of economic development of the country, adhering to global trends. And ICT in this case will be the locomotive of the development of the national economy. It must be understood that competition among all the nations of the world to attract foreign direct investment every year will only grow. Therefore, it’s out of the question that the mere value of the GII, is to potential investors a good indicator of the technological level of the economy, giving them confidence that the country in which they intend to invest their own funds, is on the innovative path of development. Capital flows around the world where the conditions for doing business better, and analysts, including the WIPO offer free financial resources holders the country, where to do or to open a new business is faster and more profitable. Eventually, the independent international rating serves precisely for this purpose. That’s why any of the ranked index should not be viewed only as a kind of international experts statistic “fun”, or as the game figures. As a rule, one or another rating position often server as an attractive tool привлекательным инструментом for the state investment policy, and innovation here play a significant role.