Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam is anoutstanding economy in turning its investment for innovation into concreteresults, according to the Global InnovationIndex (GII) Report 2018 released by the World Intellectual PropertyOrganisation (WIPO) on July 10.

Vietnam improved its position in the GII, ranking 45th among 126economies in the world, climbing two places compared to last year.

Among 30 low middle-income countries, Vietnam ranked second after Ukraine,according to the report.

In an interview with US-based Vietnam News Agency’s correspondents on thesidelines of the announcing ceremony of the report, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, asenior expert in the WIPO’s GII research group, said in the most recent editionof the GII, Vietnam emerged as a country with a special effect on innovation.

It became a model of technologicalinnovation for the group of low middle-income countries, he noted.

According to Wunsch-Vincent, Vietnam is the only country that has directionsfrom the prime minister level with a resolution on setting up a special group tobring together ministries and sectors to improve the country’s position in the globalinnovation rankings.

He noted some economies are making a serious mistake if they don’t pursue acontinual innovation agenda and recommended Vietnam to avoid this blunder and pursuepolicies and plans set forth by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to promoteinnovation.

Vietnam should not make another mistake in many countries to set goals as greatas building Silicon Valley, he added.

The country should focus on its existing internal strengths, such as in foodproduction and processing and information technology, considering ways toincrease the country’s own innovation capacity along with accessing new externaltechnologies, he said.

Le Thanh Binh, Science and Technology Counsellor of the VietnamPermanent Mission to the United Nations, highlighted the improvement of Vietnam’sposition in the GII 2018, noting that the country climbed 14 places comparedwith 2016, and recorded higher scores in all seven pillars of the GII.

The effectiveness of Vietnam's reform efforts were reflected in both input andoutput indicators and Vietnam's position in the GII rankings has improved inevery aspect in the last five years, he added.

This year, Switzerland is the world’s most innovative nation, followed by Netherlands,Sweden, the UK, Singapore, the US, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.

In the top 20 of the GII 2018, Israel and China recorded leaps. Israel climbedseven places to rank 11th and China jumped five places to the 17th position.

This is the 11th consecutive year the GII Report has been released. Itaims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation by providing adatabase of metrics for economies worldwide.

The GII2018 is divided into seven pillars. Of which, the first five pillars are in thegroup of innovation input sub-indices, including institutions, human capitaland research, infrastructure, market sophistication and business sophistication.The last two pillars are the group of innovation output sub-indices, including knowledgeand technology outputs and creative outputs.

Themed “Energizing the World withInnovation”, the GII 2018 is the result of collaboration between CornellUniversity, INSEAD and the WIPO as co-publishers.

The GII Report 2018 analyses the energyinnovation landscape of the next decade and identifies possible breakthroughsin fields such as energy production, storage, distribution and consumption. Italso looks at how breakthrough innovation occurs at the grassroots level anddescribes how small-scale renewable systems are on the rise.

The report concludes that by 2040, the world’senergy demand is expected to grow substantially by 30 percent, whileconventional approaches to expand energy supplies are no longer feasible in thecontext of climate change.-VNA