European Innovation Scoreboard

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is the instrument developed at the initiative of the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to provide a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU Member States. The EIS 2007 includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States as well as for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, the US, Australia, Canada and Israel.

History of the EIS

A pilot version of the European Innovation Scoreboard was published in 2000. Full versions have been published every year since 2001. The latest report, the EIS 2007, was published February 2008.

The 2007 EIS shows a continued process of convergence within the EU. Five EU Member States - Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom – continue to have a very strong performance as world innovation leaders alongside the US and Japan. Meanwhile, the large majority of other Member States are catching up with the leaders, and three of the newer Member States - Estonia, the Czech Republic and Lithuania - are on track to reach the EU average innovation performance within a decade. The comparison with the US shows that an important overall lead continues to exist over the EU and that the overall positive catching up process visible in particular in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investments, broadband penetration, early stage venture capital and international patenting has recently slowed down.

Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry policy said: "The continued improvement in innovation performance across the EU is very encouraging and offers further evidence that the Lisbon process and the broad-based innovation strategy are working. But the apparent slowdown in catching up with the US and in particular the increasing gap in public research and development show that reinforced efforts are needed if we are to create more world class innovation in Europe."

The EIS provides an annual assessment of innovation performance across the EU and with other leading innovative nations. The assessment is based on a wide range of indicators covering structural conditions, knowledge creation, innovative efforts by firms, and outputs in terms of new products, services and intellectual property.

The report shows that countries form four relatively stable groupings based on their performance over a five year period:

The innovation leaders, with Sweden as the most innovative country, and other countries including Denmark, Finland, Germany, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, the UK and the US. The innovation followers include Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The moderate innovators include Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Australia. The catching-up countries include Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia. Turkey is currently at a lower level of performance.

References

* [http://194.78.229.48/extranettrend/reports/documents/SEC_2001_1414_en.pdf] 2001 report
* [http://194.78.229.48/extranettrend/reports/documents/sec_2002_1349_en.pdf] 2002 report
* [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/extranet/admin/uploaded_documents/innovation_scoreboard_2003_en.pdf] 2003 report
* [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/extranet/admin/uploaded_documents/eis_2004.pdf] 2004 report
* [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/extranet/admin/uploaded_documents/EIS_2005.pdf] 2005 report
* [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/doc/EIS2006_final.pdf] 2006 report
* [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/admin/uploaded_documents/European_Innovation_Scoreboard_2007.pdf] 2007 report

External links

The EIS report and its Annexes, accompanying thematic papers, interactive tables to view results and the indicators’ database are available at [http://www.proinno-europe.eu/metrics]

EIS 2007 press release: [http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/234&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en]

EIS 2007 memo: [http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/08/87&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en]

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