Trinidad Express T&T ranks 81st in global innovation By Carla Bridglal carla.bridglal@trinidadexpress Story Created: Jul 3, 2013 at 10:18 PM ECT (Story Updated: Jul 4, 2013 at 12:08 AM ECT ) Trinidad and Tobago has been ranked 81 out of 142 countries in the 2013 Global Innovation Index for the second consecutive year, a statement on the Index’s official website has said. The country trailed 34 spots behind regional leader Barbados, ranked 47. Guyana was three spots higher at 78; and Jamaica was one spot after at 82. The Global Innovation Index 2013 (GII), in its sixth edition this year, is co-published by Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a specialised agency of the United Nations. The core of the GII Report consists of a ranking of world economies’ innovation capabilities and results. The GII includes indicators that go beyond the traditional measures of innovation such as the level of research and development, the release said. The GII 2013 is calculated as the average of two sub-indices: the Innovation Input Sub-Index (IISI), which gauges elements of the national economy which embody innovative activities. The Innovation Output Sub-Index (IOSI) captures actual evidence of innovation results. The IISI is further divided into five pillars. Trinidad and Tobago’s rank in these pillars were: Institutions, 69; Human capital and research, 59; Infrastructure, 105; Market sophistication, 91; and Business sophistication, 98. For the IOSI’s two pillars, Trinidad and Tobago ranked 87 in Knowledge and technology outputs; and 89 in Creative outputs. Planning Minister Dr Bhoe Tewarie, under whose purview the Council for Competitiveness and other programmes to foster innovation fall, said the country was not just focused on the index, but also trying to build innovation infrastructure in Trinidad and Tobago. “What we have not done well is to bring the innovation mechanism that we have in Trinidad and Tobago together in a coherent way so we can have a more desirable impact, but that is what we are working towards now,” he said.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 11:14:36 +0000
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