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The latest Innovation Scoreboard is now available
Scoreboard highlights impact of financial crisis on European innovation
The financial crisis has slowed the improvement of Europe’s innovation performance, according to the 2009 European Innovation Scoreboard
The worst affected countries are those with the lowest current levels of innovation performance. The trend could reverse a steady convergence in member states’ innovation performance over the past few years.
The Scoreboard says that the EU27 countries have been making progress in terms of an increase in the numbers of graduates in science, engineering, social sciences and humanities; the availability of venture capital, private credit, and broadband access; and as measured by the registration of community trademarks and designs, the technology balance of payments and sales of new-to-market products. However, data from the 2009 Innobarometer survey suggests that the rapid advances in innovation performance made in many lower-performing countries may not be maintained, at least in the short term, due to the severity of the economic crisis.
The Scoreboard also shows that Europe is no longer catching up with the US and Japan, and that the trend may have reversed. The gap between these countries and the EU27 is explained by Europe’s relatively weak international patenting rate; its lower number of researchers and of public/private linkages; and slower growth in business R&D expenditure.
The relationship with BRIC countries is also changing. Europe is well ahead of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with the lead over Brazil remaining stable and that over Russia improving slightly. However China and India are catching up with Europe, and the Scoreboard commentary says that extrapolating the improvement of China’s innovation performance over the past five years into the future suggests it could close the gap “in the (very) near future”.
The commentary also says there is a causal link between the internationalisation of a country and its innovation success. The theory is that the stronger a country’s links to external resources and capabilities, the more successful its innovation is likely to be, which in turn improves its ability to succeed in international markets. The commentary therefore calls for better alignment between European policies supporting internationalisation and those supporting innovation.
Other key results from the Scoreboard include a finding that more than half of innovating firms involve users in their innovation activities. This kind of user innovation is evenly spread across industrial sectors and countries. Companies that involve their users in innovation are more likely to introduce new products, processes or services and to perform R&D and apply for patents than those that don’t.
The Scoreboard is based on 29 innovation-related indicators and covers the EU27 member states, as well as Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey. The indicators are grouped in three categories: enablers, such as the availability of human resources, finance and support; business activity, such as investment, linkages and entrepreneurship, and throughputs (such as IPR); and outputs in terms of the introduction of innovations and the economic success brought by innovation. Given that this year’s report is based in part on trend data from 2007/2008, it does not yet reflect the full impact of the global financial crisis.
“Increasing investment in research and innovation is the key to moving from crisis to sustainable prosperity. That is why the Commission is maintaining the 3% of GDP target for R&D investment in Europe and proposing realistic national targets with robust monitoring,” said Antonio Tajani , Commission vice-president and commissioner for entrepreneurship and industry, and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, research commissioner, in a joint statement.
The Scoreboard also groups member states into four categories:
- Innovation leaders, whose innovation performance is well above that of the EU27, and all other countries. This category includes Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK. Among these, Germany and Finland are improving their performance most quickly. Denmark and the UK are stagnating.
- Innovation followers, whose innovation performance is less than that of innovation leaders, but close to or above that of the EU27 average. This category includes Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia. Since 2008, Cyprus, Estonia and Slovenia have entered this group due to steady improvement over recent years.
- Moderate innovators, with innovation performance below the EU27 average, include the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain.
- The catching-up countries, with innovation performance significantly below the EU27, include Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania All three countries are rapidly closing the gap with the EU27 average, and Bulgaria and Romania have been improving their performance the fastest of all member states.