Report says Jordan an ‘innovation achiever’

AMMAN — The recently released 2015 Global Innovation Index (GII) signals Jordan as an innovation achiever in the past four years.

The Kingdom is one of several countries that outperform in innovation inputs and outputs relative to their level of development, according to the report. 

In addition to Jordan, these outperformers include Armenia, China, Georgia, India and Kenya.

“These and other countries have realised that technology adoption alone is no longer sufficient to maintain a high-growth scenario; rather, innovation is now crucial for catching up to high-income countries,” the report, which covered 141 economies on 79 different indicators, said.

The “Effective Innovation Policies for Development” report was conducted by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the New York-based Cornell University and business school INSEAD from France.

Indexes of the report are divided into institution, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology output, and creative output categories with three sub-sets in each area.

“By excelling in all four years, these countries [including Jordan] demonstrate the most persistent innovation performance measured as GII score relative to their GDP,” the report said. 

Jordan’s performance was particularly strong in the institutions category, thanks to its scores in the regulatory environment.

Despite being an innovation achiever every year since 2011, Jordan’s overall ranking in the GII fell from 41st in 2011 to 64th in 2014 (and now 75th in 2015).

At the Arab level, Jordan ranked 7th and was preceded by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Lebanon.

“Between 2012 and 2014, Jordan’s main challenges [were] related to its poor performance in market sophistication, in particular in the indicators measuring ease of getting credit and protecting investors. Performance in this area improved in 2015, but not enough to compensate for the lower rankings in almost all other areas [except for infrastructure],” the report added.

“For example, although Jordan performed well in business sophistication in the past because of solid improvements in innovation linkages, in 2015 it lost 34 spots in this area,” it said. 

Similarly, in knowledge and technology outputs, Jordan lost 23 positions in the 2015 rankings, almost reaching again the position it held in 2012. Limited evidence, however, exists to determine which policies can explain this performance, it indicated.

Abed Shamlawi, technology and entrepreneurship consultant, said the ecosystem in Jordan supports innovation, but more is needed. 

“We need to greatly place an emphasis on development of skills...we need to boost the skills of graduates as having skilled graduates increases innovation in the country,” he said. 

“We have a good number of successful and promising start-ups in various areas and we have incubators for supporting entrepreneurs, in addition to the government’s incentives. But we should not stop here,” Shamlawi told The Jordan Times on Monday.