Telangana stood second in India Innovation rankings and topped in the performers category of 17 major States. The rankings given by NITI Aayog are a comprehensive tool for evaluation and development of the country’s innovation ecosystem.
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The NITI Aayog noted in its report of third edition released on Thursday that being one of the top IT destinations and being known for housing big MNCs and startups, Telangana performed well across indicators. For example, the percentage of schools with Information and Communication Technology labs doubled from about 17 per cent to 35 per cent . In terms of higher education, the number of enrolment (per lakh population) also increased from about 9.7 per cent to about 15.7 per cent.
This was complimented with the number of private R & D units (per lakh population) increasing from about 0.3 to about 1.4 depicting the State’s potential to create knowledge workers. Consequently, the State performed well in knowledge output pillars., including patents, trademarks and industrial design which witnessed an increase in the units filed, compared to the last year, apart from increasing its start-ups from about 4,900 t0 9,000.
However, the State was not able to improve its performance in the knowledge diffusion pillar. This goes to show that although the State was able to create and apply knowledge , it was not able to reflect the same in its products or services. Therefore, the State needed to focus on how the knowledge that was created could be applied to its products and services.