Philippines remains at bottom half of global innovation survey

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines retained its ranking in this year’s edition of the Global Innovation Index (GII) as it placed 73rd out of 126 countries.

Co-published by Cornell University, graduate business school INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization, the GII serves as the benchmarking tool for the state of innovation of countries.

In last year’s GII, the Philippines got the 73rd spot as well.

Within the Southeast Asian region, the Philippines had a better ranking this year compared to Indonesia (85th) and Cambodia (98th), but was behind Singapore (fifth), Malaysia (35th), Thailand (44th), Vietnam (45th) and Brunei Darussalam (67th).

The GII ranks countries based on innovation capabilities and results using the following pillars: institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs.

For the institutions pillar which covers the political, regulatory and business environment, the Philippines ranked 93rd.

In terms of the human capital and research pillar which looks into the level and standard of education and research activity in a country, the Philippines got the 86th spot.

As for the infrastructure pillar which covers information and communication technologies, general infrastructure and ecological sustainability, the Philippines placed 67th.

The Philippines ranked 100th in terms of market sophistication which involves availability of credit, investments, as well as trade, competition and market scale.

For the business sophistication pillar which looks into knowledge workers, innovation linkages and knowledge absorption, the Philippines got the 44th spot.

The Philippines placed 49th in terms of the knowledge and technology outputs pillar, while it ranked 92nd in creative outputs.

Overall, Switzerland continued to top the GII.

This was followed by the Netherlands which placed second, while Sweden got the third spot.

Meanwhile, Yemen placed 126th or at the bottom of the list.