Austria

The EIS country pages provide for each of the European countries covered by the EIS 2007 a performance chart showing performance by indicator relative to the EU mean, a radar graph showing the innovation performance for each of the innovation dimensions relative to the country’s SII performance and the data tables showing, where available, time series data for the SII, the dimensions and each of the indicators.

More information is available on each country is available in the EIS report and its thematic papers which are available on the INNO Metrics website). The EIS 2007 thematic papers provide information on services innovation, the impact of differences in socio-economic conditions on innovation performance, innovation efficiency and non-R&D based innovation.

Austria is in the group of "innovation followers" countries whose innovation performance is above the EU average but below the "innovation leader" countries. Other EU countries in this group which therefore have a similar level of performance are Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Its innovation performance has improved over the last 5 years relative to the EU average.

Within the five dimensions of innovation, Austria performs well above the EU average in the Knowledge Creation and Intellectual Property dimensions, with relatively high levels on indicators of R&D expenditure, patenting and numbers of Community trademarks and industrial designs. However, Austria has relative weaknesses in Innovation Drivers, due to low levels of tertiary education and lifelong learning, and in Applications stemming from low employment in high-tech services, and low shares of new to firm and new to market products. Austria has above average efficiency in transforming innovation inputs into outputs.