Innovation Scoreboard 2009 available

The EIS 2009 shows that Innovation performance in Member States continues to converge. Most Member States have improved their Innovation performance in recent years, but the economic crisis threatens to reverse this good.

The Innovation gap with the US and Japan continues to be substantial. The moderated and progressive reduction in the gap with the US observed in recent years seems to have slowed down. The remaining gap is primarily explained in terms of business R&D expenditure, international patents and numbers of researchers.

The EU still holds a firm lead in Innovation performance to the BRIC (Brasil, Russia, China, India) countries, but China's rate of relative improvement is impressive. In a scenario of simple linear extrapolation of current trends, China's Innovation performance could catch up with the EU-27 average in ten years.

You can access the full report at European Innovation Scoreboard 2009

The Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2009 is available here