GDP tells governments how much their economies produced and‚ therefore‚ how well they are doing․ But GDP doesn’t directly measure the sustainability of growth‚ a country's ability to adapt to the rate of technological change or a country's ability to transform knowledge into economic growth in the future․ This gap is precisely the one that two leading global indices‚ the Global Innovation Index and the Network Readiness Index‚ co-created by Soumitra Dutta (former dean of the Saïd Business School at Oxford)‚ focus on․

The GII is an annual publication of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)‚ now in its 18th year․ The index covers 139 economies and is based on more than 80 indicators‚ including research and development‚ venture capital‚ patents‚ high-tech exports‚ and the creative economy․ The Network Readiness Index (NRI) -- published by the Portulans Institute‚ which was cofounded by Soumitra Dutta -- assesses the network readiness landscape across 127 economies using 53 indicators contained within Technology‚ People‚ Governance and Impact pillars․ Collectively‚ these indices offer insights into an economy's capacity to generate and sustain innovation over time that GDP alone cannot․

As the GII 2025 concludes‚ the world innovation system is at a crossroads․ The investment‚ policy and international cooperation choices made by the global community today could shape whether innovation will continue to represent a force for inclusive growth or increasingly be concentrated in a small set of economies‚ sectors and firms․ That's not something GDP can answer․

The NRI 2025‚ which looks at AI governance in global contexts‚ notes that the national outcomes of digital readiness are determined increasingly by different levels of quality of governance and implementation at the institutional level rather than by income. A country may provide world-class infrastructure but not quality digital governance․ The NRI surfaces those mismatches in ways that aggregate economic output figures never could․

The GII and the NRI help policymakers identify in which areas of their innovation ecosystems they have strengths and weaknesses and where investments will have the most impact․ These questions may matter more in an age of AI and the knowledge economy than a single high-level measure of GDP․