Irish Regions Office Website

January 24, 2009

2008 Innovation Scoreboard

The 2008 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) published on 21 January shows the EU making substantial progress in its innovation performance up to the dawn of the current financial crisis. The relative innovation gap with the US and Japan was reduced, in particular amid strong progress by many new Member States such as Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria. Across the EU, particular progress was made in human resources and availability of finance for innovation. However, innovative investments by businesses are still relatively weak especially if compared to the US and Japan. In parallel, the 2008 Science, Technology and Competitiveness report provides a more in-depth analysis of trends in public and business R&D, technological performance and progress in implementing the European Research Area.

The report shows that European countries form four groupings at different levels of performance, and that virtually all countries have improved their performance although the rate of progress varies. While Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark and the UK are 'Innovation leaders', with performances well above the EU average, Ireland joins Austria, Luxembourg, Belgium, France and the Netherlands among the secondary category of 'Innovation followers', with above-average performances. Indeed, Ireland's performance has been increasing fastest within this group. Other countries are categorized as either ''Moderate innovators'' or'''Catching-up''.
Ireland’s relative strengths are in Human resources, Throughputs and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Firm investments and Linkages & entrepreneurship. Over the past 5 years, Human resources and Finance and support have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Science & Engineering and SSH doctorate graduates (12.8%), Private credit (14.6%) and Broadband access by firms (37.5%). Performance in Firm investments, Linkages & entrepreneurship and Innovators has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in Non-R&D innovation expenditures (-5.7%), Innovative SMEs collaborating with others (-7.0%) and SMEs introducing product or process innovations (-3.3%).

http://www.proinno-europe.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=473&parentID=51

Posted by iroronan at January 24, 2009 11:35 AM