The 2017 Global Innovation Index Forum Held in Beijing

The 2017 Global Innovation Index (GII), which provides rankings and analyses of innovation performance of 127 economies based on 81 indicators, has recently been released. In the wake of the release of the report on 24 June 2017, the WIPO Office in China (WOC) hosted the 2017 GIobal Innovation Index Forum in Beijing to explore the theme of this year's GII, i.e., "Innovation Feeding the World", with a focus on the situation of China.

The forum started with a video conference during which Mr. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, senior economist at WIPO and editor of the 2017 GII, briefed on the methodological framework of the 2017 GII and gave an overview of the changes and trends in the innovation performance of the economies as reflected in this year's GII. After that, experts in the fields of agriculture and intellectual property had heated discussion about ways of developing sustainable agriculture and food supply systems in China taking into account the national target of building an innovative nation. Many experts at the forum considered urban agriculture a suitable path to take in meeting the challenge of agricultural innovation in the country.

The 2017 GII is the tenth edition of the GII report and was jointly published by WIPO, Cornell University, and INSEAD. According to the report, China moved up 3 spots to the top 22nd, and saw improvement in GII's five pillar indicators out of seven, namely, institutions; human capital and research; infrastructure; knowledge and technology outputs; and creative outputs.