Belgium

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.

Belgium is in the group of "innovation followers" and its innovation performance is just above the EU average, but below the "innovation leader" countries. Other EU countries in this group with a similar overall level of performance are Austria, France, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Its innovation performance has declined relative to the average EU growth rate in the last five years.

Within the five dimensions of innovation, Belgium performs above the EU average on the Knowledge Drivers, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Intellectual Property. It is below EU average in Knowledge Creation, with a relatively low level on the indicator of R&D expenditure, and in Applications where it is relatively low on the indicator of exports of high technology products, and sales of new to firm and new to market products.  Belgium is above average in the efficiency of transforming innovation inputs to Application outputs but below average for Intellectual Property outputs.