European
Innovation Scoreboard: Base Findings
Five key dimensions of
innovation performance Innovation is
a non-linear process. The 26 EIS innovation indicators have
been classified into five categories to better capture the
various aspects of the innovation process. These five categories
cover different dimensions of innovation performance with
a limited set of indicators. Innovation drivers measure
the structural conditions required for innovation potential, Knowledge
creation measures the investments in R&D activities, Innovation & entrepreneurship measures
the efforts towards innovation at the firm level, Application measures
the performance expressed in terms of labour and business
activities and their value added in innovative sectors, and Intellectual
property measures the achieved results in terms of
successful know-how. Figure 6 shows the ranking of countries
for each of these groups from the worst to best performer.
Country colour codes correspond with those in Figure 4.
Figure 6. Innovation
performance per group of indicators
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Countries generally perform at a comparable level in each
of these groups. However, there are some noteworthy exceptions.
Germany , Italy and Luxembourg are performing less well
in Innovation drivers, Switzerland in Knowledge creation
and Iceland in Applications than in the other groups. Estonia
, Latvia and Portugal are performing much better in Innovation & entrepreneurship
and the Czech Republic and Ireland in Applications than
in the other groups. The EIS report on Strengths and Weaknesses
gives more detailed information on the strengths and challenges
of each country.
There is some evidence that countries with an even performance
on each of the key dimensions perform better overall than
countries with an uneven distribution.
Germany 's weak performance on Innovation drivers might
thus hamper the effect of increased efforts in other key
dimensions on the overall innovative performance of the
country. A similar statement can be made for Knowledge
creation in Denmark , the UK and Switzerland , and Innovation
drivers in Austria and Portugal . The opposite might also
hold true: a country can also over perform in one of the
key dimensions without fully benefiting of an improved
overall innovative performance. This might be the case
for Innovation & entrepreneurship in Estonia and Portugal,
and Applications in Ireland.
The information delivered by these 5 categories allows
for a rapid identification of areas of weakness to be explored.
However, further analysis and identification of strengths
and weaknesses will have to be conducted through an in-depth
study of the component indicators and external sources.
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