PORTUGAL

For Portugal, one of the Moderate innovators, innovation performance is below the EU27 average but the rate of improvement is three times that of the EU27 making it a growth leader within the group of Moderate innovators. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Finance and support and Innovators while relative weaknesses are in Firm investments and Throughputs.

Over the past 5 years, Human resources, Firm investments 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 (15.8%), S&E and SSH doctorate graduates (16.9%), Business R&D expenditures (26.3%) and EPO patents (16.4%). Performance in the other dimensions has increased at a slower pace, except in Innovators where there has been almost no improvement.