European Comission has published Innovation Union Scoreboard 2016 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 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. The report shows positive trends in human resources, and the attractiveness, openness and quality of research systems, but negative trends both in research investment and in the framework conditions for business engagement in venture capital and SME innovation.
Based on the average innovation performance, the Member States fall into four different performance groups. Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are “Innovation leaders” with innovation performance well above that of the EU average. Slovakia falls into “Moderate innovators”. Over an eight-year period (2008–2015), performance has been improving for the EU as a whole, and for as many as 21 Member States. However, for seven Member States, long-term performance growth has been negative, with most negative growth rate observed for Romania.
At a wider European level, Switzerland confirms its top position outperforming all EU Member states. For the first time, this year´s report includes a forward-looking analysis of EU innovation performance discussing more recent developments, trends, and expected changes. Overall, the EU innovation index is expected to increase relatively strongly by about 2.5% in two years´ time. At the global level, the trends observed in recent years can be expected to continue, with the EU performance gap towards Japan and the US narrowing further, the gap towards South Korea increasing, and the EU lead over China shrinking.
Innovation performance of Slovakia has increased between 2008 and 2015, but declined in 2011 and in 2012. Performance relative to the EU reached a peak in 2014 at almost 68% of the EU average, and is at 67% in 2015. 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, PCT patent applications in societal challenges, Non-EU doctorate students, Venture capital investments, and PCT patent applications. Performance in most dimensions and most indicators has improved. The highest growth in terms of indicators is observed for and Non-EU doctorate students (16%), Community trademarks (12%) and R&D expenditures in the public sector (11%). A very strong decline in performance can be observed in License and patent revenues from abroad (-25%), and for Non-R&D innovation expenditures (-8.8%).
