Innovation and Innovation Policy in Greece
Innovation and Innovation Policy in Greece 
Overview of Innovation Policy
Innovation performance in Greece has progressed significantly during the last ten years, but still much remains to be done in both the business and the government sectors, since the competitiveness of the country’s economy remains sluggish. Part of the progress may be attributed to the Community policies and the Structural Funds, which have favoured investment in new businesses and human resources development, in parallel to the traditional investments on energy and transportation infrastructures. In this respect, the development process has a strong exogenous component, while is poor in internal dynamics. The global economic crisis has revealed the deficiencies of the national system of innovation and added problems in policy design and implementation.
The EIS classified Greece until 2007 in the group of “catching up countries”, together with other south and east European economies. In 2007 indicators there were even signs of slight retreat in innovativeness; but the revision of the SII in 2008 is enhancing the position of Greece (as of many other countries) and bringing her together with “moderate innovators”. Actually, the innovativeness of the Greek economy depends heavily on imported technology and know how and flourishes thanks to organisational and marketing innovations and very little on the production and exploitation of new knowledge. This business behaviour leads to high performance in “new to firm” and “new to the market” innovations, but very deficient in medium to high technology manufacturing and exports. The form of the development characteristics is seen even in the throughputs, where progress is shown in design and trade mark registrations, but not in EPO patent applications and TBP flows.
The present situation calls for two – alternative – types of strategy for the public government: admit that developing a reliable knowledge production and exploitation structure is an impossible task and reinforce the knowledge transfer and dissemination mechanisms, together with encouraging organisational changes, including full use of ICT capabilities; or design and launch a vast campaign to overhaul the institutional framework, the civil service and the educational system to create the conditions for the emergence of a knowledge driven economy. In practice, the political positions of the various parties opt for the latter, but the actions and measures taken or proposed so far, with some “advanced” exceptions, support the first alternative. This discrepancy between ambition and action is reflected in the initiatives of various actors in the government, the business and academic communities and the political system. The most advanced measures were criticised as too sophisticated and as the result of “inappropriate policy transfer” favoured by the European policies and the Structural Funds.
Despite the differences in goals of the two alternative strategies, there are common challenges that the government has to face urgently, in order to improve innovativeness and competitiveness. One of the most important is the dissemination of new knowledge through an effective life long training system. Despite the efforts made with the support of the ESF, the corresponding indicator is very low, and its quality is evaluated even lower. A second challenge has to do with the policy making and delivery structure. The civil service and the assimilated organisations, managed by politically assigned staff, suffer from low effectiveness and serious difficulty to select priority fields; the measures taken of whatever relevance are imperfectly implemented and assessed only intuitively. This has led to the creation of parallel administrative structures to manage operational programmes, but their impact on socio-economic change and by-effects on main civil service may be seriously questioned.
Moreover, both types of strategies require a minimum level of RTD activity to support effective technology transfer from business to business and the assimilation of know how by the human potential of the firms. The present level of RTD spending compared to GDP is stuck to 0.6% for many years: although RTD spending has increased, the GDP increased more rapidly. Worse, the level of BERD, compared to the EU average, is regressing, reducing the knowledge intensity of the economy. All governments of both main political parties set a GERD/GDP target at 1.5% for 2010, but with no practical impact. The target was postponed to 2015, with no analysis of the tools and steps for its achievement. In addition, the main opposition party increased recently the stake at 2% of GDP.
The main organisations involved explicitly in innovation policy are the General Secretariats for Research and Technology (GSRT) and for Industry (GSI) of the Ministry of Development and the General Secretariat for Investment and Development of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF). A National Competitiveness Council established as an advisor body by the Minister of Development, groups representatives of the government and the private sector, but has demonstrated little activity until now. Moreover, the Ministries of Education and of Employment, deal or are expected to deal with issues of entrepreneurship promotion among youth, academic and industrial research financing, life long learning and other issues related to the human capital and the labour market.
These ministries and secretariats are preparing and implementing the operational programmes, supported by the Structural Funds of the EU, and enforcing the EU regional development policies. A particular emphasis was given to innovation and research results exploitation in the 2000-2006 Competitiveness Operational Programme. Most of the actions are expected to continue by 2009 in the new Programme 2007-2013, that has started with measures in favour of cluster development in microelectronics and the innovation vouchers. At the same time, most political debate was allocated to the academic research, whose funding was foreseen by a new Act pending for implementation, and in particular to the university reform. More innovation oriented actions are launched by the GSI (i.e. the encouragement of youth entrepreneurship), while the New Economy Fund TANEO, established by MEF, is expanding its participations in private venture funds.
The university system remains the main operator for RTD (approx. 45% of the RTD spending), under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. Repeated efforts to reform the bureaucratised and strongly politicised academic management are implemented with extremely slow pace, to close the gap with European standards.
Overall innovation policy still needs to be consolidated and to be given a prominent position in the government policies and in the public debate on economic and social development. There is no need to say that innovation is not a component of one ministry’s policy, but has to permeate all policies and be endowed with appropriate effective instruments with clear objectives, continuous assessment and benchmarking with competitors.
| Annual Country Reports |
 Country report 2009 for GREECE
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| Country report 2008 for Greece
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| Country report 2007 for Greece
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| Country Report 2006 for Greece
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| Country Report 2005 for Greece
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| Country Report Greece September 2004
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| Greece - Trend Chart Country Report, September 2003
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| Greece - Trend Chart Country Report, March 2003
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| Greece - Trend Chart Country Report, October 2002
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| Greece Trend Chart Theme-specific Country Report, May 2002
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| Greece - Trend Chart Country Report, November 2001
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| Greece Trend Chart Country report June 2001
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| Greece Trend Chart Country Report Dec 2000
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| Greece Trend Chart Country Report June 2000
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| Innovation News |
 Greece: General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) moves to Ministry of Education |
| New Greek government programme given to parliament |
| Latest TrendChart Deliverables |
| Workshop Briefing Greece 13_2006 |
| Workshop Briefing Greece 11_2006 |
| Workshop Briefing Greece 10_2006 |
| Workshop Briefing Greece 9_2005 |
| Workshop Briefing Greece 7_2005 |
| New Support Measures |
| GR 100 I save |
| GR 98 Enhancement of the Youth Entrepreneurship Desks |
| GR 99 Creation – support to new innovative enterprises, notably highly knowledge intensive (spin off and spin out) |
| GR 42 Awards and financial support to inventors |
| GR 95 Innovation vouchers for SMEs |
Who Is Who
Senior Official(s) for Greece
Zacharias Mavroukas
N. Sargianos
Correspondents for Greece
Dimitris Deniozos
Lena Tsipouri
Search Who's Who
Innovation Performance
Performance in Innovation Scoreboard 2008Find Out More
List of relevant websites
