The result of “Investigation into Changes in the Global Innovation Index (GII) in INSEAD”

This investigation aims to clarify the content of the innovation indicators contained in The Global Innovation Index (“GII”) report drafted by INSEAD, with the aim of providing reference information for the selection of indicators to measure the state of innovation in Japan.

I have carried out an analysis from the perspective of investigating what types of innovation indicators have been used in the GII, how the selected innovation indicators have changed each year, and how Japan’s global innovation index ranking has changed in accordance with the selected indices.

The types of indicators used in GII were as follows. In the 2008-09 GII, soft data accounted for 46%, hard data accounted for 40% and index data accounted for 14%. By the time of the 2013 GII, there had been significant changes in the indicators used, and hard data had increased to 71%, soft data accounted for just 6% and index data accounted for 23%.

Japan’s ranking in the GII was 9th in the 2008-09 GII, but in the 2013 GII its ranking had fallen to 22nd. When we look at Japan’s ranking based on innovation input and innovation output, its ranking did not change significantly in terms of innovation input, but in terms of innovation output its ranking fell significantly.

Japan’s ranking in “7. Creative outputs”, which is one of the sub-categories of innovation output, fell sharply from the 2009-2010 GII to the 2011 GII, and this can be considered to have been a result of changes in the indicators used.