Innovation Performance

3.1 Innovation Performance

3.1 Key dimensions of innovation performance

The Summary Innovation Index (SII) gives an “at a glance” overview of aggregate national innovation performance and is calculated as a composite of the 29 EIS indicators (see Section 8.1 for the methodology for calculating composite indicators [1]). Figure 2 shows the results for the 2008 SII for European countries [2]. Compared to the EIS 2007, non-European countries are no longer directly included in the EIS [3]. These countries are included in the Global Innovation Scoreboard (Section 5.3) and for Japan and the US a more detailed comparison with the EU27 is discussed in Section 4.

 

Figure 2: Innovation performance (2008 Summary Innovation Index)

Reference data for most of the underlying indicators are for 2006 and 2007.

 

Based on a statistical cluster analysis of SII scores over a five-year period and using the same names for the four country groups as in the EIS 2007 the countries can be divided into the following groups:

  • Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK are the Innovation leaders, with innovation performance well above that of the EU27 and all other countries.
  • Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands are the Innovation followers, with innovation performance below those of the innovation leaders but above that of the EU27.
  • Cyprus, Estonia, Iceland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Spain are the Moderate innovators with innovation performance below the EU27, where the first 4 countries show a better performance than the last 6 countries.
  • Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Turkey are the Catching-up countries. Although their innovation performance is well below the EU average, this performance is increasing towards the EU average over time with the exception of Croatia and Lithuania (Figure 3).

For most countries group membership is the same as that identified in the EIS 2007. [4] Exceptions to this are Greece and Portugal which have moved from the Catching-up countries in the EIS 2007 to the group of Moderate innovators, a result which can both be explained from their strong growth in innovation performance and from the revised set of indicators used in calculating average innovation performance [5]. A further exception is Iceland which has dropped from the Innovation followers to the Moderate innovators following the revised method of calculating countries’ average innovation performance [6].

 

Figure 3: Convergence in innovation performance

Colour coding matches the groups of countries identified in Section 3.1: green are the innovation leaders, yellow are the innovation followers, orange are the moderate innovators, blue are the catching-up countries. Average annual growth rates as calculated over a five-year period. The dotted lines show EU performance and growth.

 

3.2 Development in innovation performance

The development in innovation performance has been calculated for each country and for the EU27 as a block using data over a five-year period [7]. This calculation is based on absolute changes in the indicators, as opposed to previous EIS reports where trends were calculated relative to the EU average. All countries, with the exception of Denmark show an absolute improvement in the innovation performance over the period. Romania and Bulgaria have experienced the fastest growth in performance, albeit from a low starting point.

Within the four identified country groups growth performance is very different and Table 2 identifies the growth leaders within each group. Within the Innovation leaders, Switzerland is the growth leader and all other countries in this group show a rate of improvement that is below that of the EU27. For the Innovation followers we observe that only Ireland and Austria have managed to grow faster than the EU27. These countries are the growth leaders within the Innovation followers. Of the Moderate innovators seven countries have grown faster than the EU27, but three countries have shown a slower progress: Italy, Norway and Spain. The growths leaders here are Cyprus and Portugal. Of the Catching-up countries two countries have actually grown at a slower pace than the EU27: Lithuania and Croatia. Bulgaria and Romania are the growth leaders also showing the overall fastest rate of improvement in innovation performance.

The average growth rates for the four country groups (Table 2) show that there is between group convergence with the Moderate innovators and the Catching-up countries growing at a faster rate than the Innovation leaders and Innovation followers. This overall process of catching up, where countries with below average performance have faster growth rates than those with above average performance, can also be observed at the level of most individual countries. Notable exceptions include Cyprus which combines a close to average level of performance with a high growth rate; Italy, Spain, Norway, Lithuania and Croatia which combine below average levels of performance with below average growth rates; and Switzerland which is combining a high level of innovation performance and an above average rate of improvement.

 
Table 2: Innovation growth leaders

Group

Growth rate

Growth leaders

Moderate growers

Slow growers

Innovation leaders

1.6%

Switzerland (CH)

Germany (DE), Finland (FI)

Denmark (DK), Sweden (SE), United Kingdom (UK)

Innovation followers

2.0%

Ireland (IE), Austria (AT)

Belgium (BE)

France (FR), Luxembourg (LU), Netherlands (NL)

Moderate innovators

3.6%

Cyprus (CY), Portugal (PT)

Czech Republic (CZ), Estonia (EE), Greece (GR), Iceland (IS), Slovenia (SI)

Italy (IT), Norway (NO), Spain (ES)

Catching-up countries

4.1%

Bulgaria (BG), Romania (RO)

Latvia (LV), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), Poland (PL), Slovakia (SK), Turkey (TR)

Croatia (HR), Lithuania (LT)

Average annual growth rates as calculated over a five-year period.

 

 

Figure 4: Country groups: Innovation performance per dimension

 

[1] The SII has also been calculated retrospectively using the EIS 2008 methodology for the last five years to enable comparability of results; the SII time series is provided in Annex D.

[2] All of the European countries shown have good data availability, i.e. for at least 70% of the indicators (i.e. for 22 of the 29 indicators).

[3] Non-European countries in the EIS 2007 included Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan and the United States (US).

[4] Within the Innovation leaders group it can also be noted that Switzerland is the leading country, compared to Sweden in the 2007 EIS report. This partly reflects the change in methodology but also the strong growth by Switzerland in areas such as economic effects and throughputs (see country profiles).

[5] For Portugal performance is above average for the new indicators on S&E and SSH doctorate graduates, Private credit, Broadband access by firms and Resource efficiency innovators. Greece also benefits from above average performance on Broadband access by firms and Resource efficiency innovators but also from a very large increase for New-to-market sales from the 2004 results from the Community Innovation Survey used for the EIS 2007 and the 2006 results used for the EIS 2008.

[6] In determining the maximum and minimum scores in the normalisation process (cf. Step 6 in the Technical Annex) small countries with populations of 1 million or less are no longer included.

[7] The methodology for calculating growth rates is described in the Technical Annex.