European Comission has published Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015 that provides a comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of the EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems.
The scoreboard states that the impact of the economic crisis has become visible for several Member states which showed a decreasing innovation performance compared to last year. The measurement framework used in the Innovation Union Scoreboard distinguishes between 8 innovation dimensions as Human resources; Open, excellent and attractive research systems; Finance and support; Firm investments; Linkages & entrepreneurship; Intellectual assets; Innovators and Economic effects. In total, 25 different indicators were captured.
Based on the average innovation performance, the Member States fall into four different performance groups. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden are “Innovation leaders” with innovation performance well above that of the EU average. Slovakia falls into “Moderate innovators”. The most innovative countries have balanced innovation systems with strengths in all dimensions. Over a longer time period of eight years, the EU has been improving its innovation performance - the EU average annual growth rate of innovation performance has reached 1.0% over the analysed eight-year period 2007-2014. Latvia, Bulgaria and Malta are the innovation growth leaders. The innovation gap between the Member states closes slowly and innovation performance has declined for 13 Member States, in particular for Romania, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece and Spain.
At a wider European level, Switzerland confirms its top position outperforming all EU Member states. When looking at performance of innovation systems in a global context, South Korea, the US and Japan all have a performance lead over the EU. These countries are particularly dominating the EU in indicators capturing business activity as measured by R&D expenditures in the business sector, Public-private co-publications and PCT patents but also in educational attainment as measured by the Share of population having completed tertiary education.
Innovation performance of Slovakia has increased between 2007 and 2014, but declined in 2010 and in 2013. The performance relative to the EU has had more fluctuations but over time has increased significantly. Performance relative to the EU reached a peak in 2012 at 69% of the EU average, but fell to 64% in 2014. Slovakia performs below the EU average for all dimensions, except Human resources, and also for most indicators. Large relative strengths in terms of indicators are in Sales share of new innovations and New doctorate graduates. Large relative weaknesses are in License and patent revenues from abroad, Non-EU doctorate students, PCT patent applications in societal challenges and PCT patent applications. Performance in most dimensions and most indicators has improved. The highest growth in terms of indicators is observed for Community trademarks and Non-EU doctorate students. A very strong decline in performance can be observed in License and patent revenues from abroad (-38%), and a more modest decline for Non-R&D innovation expenditures.
Fing the report here.
Illustrative photo, Source: flickr.com/ Daniel Borman
