GERMANY

Germany is one of the Innovation leaders with innovation performance considerably above the EU27 average and the rate of improvement is also above that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Innovators and Economic effects and relative weaknesses are in Human resources, Finance and support and Throughputs.

Over the past 5 years, Human resources, Finance and support and Throughputs have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in S&E and SSH graduates (12.2%), Venture capital (10.4%), Broadband access (11.7%) and Technology Balance of Payments flows (8.2%). Performance in Innovators has slightly worsened, due to a decrease in SMEs introducing product or process innovations (-0.7%).