As in previous EIS reports, the 25 innovation indicators in the 2007 EIS have been classified into five dimensions to better capture the various aspects of the innovation process [1]. Innovation drivers measure the structural conditions required for innovation potential, Knowledge creation measures the investments in R&D activities, Innovation & entrepreneurship measures the efforts towards innovation at the firm level, Applications measures the performance expressed in terms of labour and business activities and their value added in innovative sectors, and Intellectual property measures the achieved results in terms of successful know-how.

Figure 2 shows the ranking of countries and for each of the 5 dimensions, from worst to best performer. Countries and groups generally perform at a comparable level in each of these dimensions but with some noteworthy exceptions.
The innovation leaders are among the best performers in all 5 dimensions. However, Germany is performing relatively worse in Innovation drivers, Denmark in Knowledge creation and in Applications and the UK in Intellectual property. Sweden’s overall innovation leadership is based on its exceptional performance in the three dimensions capturing innovation inputs, but Sweden’s performance in the two dimensions capturing innovation outputs is not as good. Of the newly added countries, we observe that Israel is a strong performer in Innovation drivers, Knowledge creation and Applications, but that Intellectual property is a relatively weakness.

The innovation followers are above average performers in almost all cases. However, Luxembourg is performing relatively worse in Innovation drivers, the Netherlands in Innovation & entrepreneurship and in Applications and Austria in Applications. Iceland is performing relatively well in Knowledge creation and Luxembourg in Intellectual property.
The moderate innovators are close to or below average across the dimensions. However, Norway is performing relatively well in Innovation drivers, Cyprus and Estonia in Innovation & entrepreneurship and Czech Republic in Applications. Performance is relatively worse for Italy in Innovation drivers and Innovation & entrepreneurship, Estonia in Knowledge creation and Cyprus in Applications. The relative gap between the moderate innovators and innovation leaders tends to be greatest in Intellectual Property. Of the newly added countries, Australia shows relatively strong performance in Innovation drivers and Innovation & entrepreneurship, but performance in Knowledge creation and Intellectual property is relatively weak. For Canada only information for two of the dimensions is available, showing about the same relative moderate performance.

The catching-up countries are below EU average in all of the dimensions with the noticeable exception on Applications where Malta has the highest ranking and Slovakia ranks above some innovation leaders. In both cases these countries score highly on sales of new to market products, which may be a reflection of the relatively small markets that companies in these countries operate within. In both cases the high ranking on Applications is also partly due to the structure of their economies as Malta has high exports of high technology products and Slovakia a high share of employment in medium-high and high tech manufacturing. Although Turkey's overall performance is below that of EU Member States, it has a stronger performance than some Member States on Knowledge creation. [2]

An important result from this analysis is that the innovation leaders and the innovation followers have a relatively even and strong performance across all five dimensions of innovation. [3] This tends to indicate mature innovation systems, although in all cases there are areas of relative weakness that require attention. In contrast, the moderate innovators and catching up countries tend to have a less even performance across the five dimensions, indicating that these countries may need to correct the imbalances in their innovation systems if they are to progress to higher levels of performance.

 

Figure 2: Innovation performance per innovation dimension [4]

Colour coding is conform the groups of countries as identified in Section 2.1: bright green is Sweden, green are the innovation leaders, yellow are the innovation followers, orange are the moderate innovators, blue are the catching-up countries, dark blue is Turkey.

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