Regional Innovation Scoreboard

This edition of the European Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) provides a comparative assessment of innovation performance across the NUTS 2 regions of the European Union and Norway. As the regional level is important for economic development and for the design and implementation of innovation policies, it is important to have indicators to compare and benchmark innovation performance at regional level. Such evidence is vital to inform policy priorities and to monitor trends.

With respect to the previous report published in 2006, which used a very limited set of regional indicators, this report offers richer information to regional innovation policymakers, mainly thanks to the availability for the first time, of more comprehensive and detailed, regional Community Innovation Survey (CIS) indicators. As a result, the 2009 Regional Innovation Scoreboard is able to replicate the methodology used at national level in the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), using 16 of the 29 indicators used in the EIS for 201 Regions across the EU27 and Norway. Changes over time are considered using principally data from 2004 and from 2006.

Despite this progress, the data available at regional level remains considerably less than at national level, and in particular four Member States - Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands – were not able to provide regional CIS data. Due to these limitations, the 2009 RIS does not provide an absolute ranking of individual regions, but ranks groups of regions at broadly similar levels of performance.

The main findings are:

  • There is considerable diversity in regional innovation performances. The results show that all countries have regions at different levels of performance. This emphasizes the need for policies to reflect regional contexts and for better data to assess regional innovation performances. The most heterogeneous countries are Spain, Italy and Czech Republic where innovation performance varies from low to medium-high.
  • The most innovative regions are typically in the most innovative countries. Nearly all the "high innovators" regions are in the group of "Innovation Leaders" identified in the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). Similarly all of the "low innovators” regions are located in countries that have below average performance in the EIS. However, the results also show regions that outperform their country level:
    • Noord-Brabant is a high innovating region located in an "Innovation follower" country (the Netherlands).
    • Praha in the Czech Republic, Pais Vasco, Comunidad Foral de Navarra, Comunidad de Madrid and Cataluña in Spain, Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna in Italy, Zahodna Slovenija in Slovenia, and Oslo og Akershus, Sør-Østlandet, Agder og Rogaland, Vestlandet and Trøndelag in Norway are all medium-high innovating regions from moderate innovators and catching up countries.
    • The capital regions in Hungary and Slovakia show an innovation level at the EU average but are located in catching up countries whose overall innovation performance is well below average.
  • Regions have different strengths and weaknesses. A more detailed analysis was conducted for those regions with good data availability. This shows that regions are performing at different levels across three dimensions of innovation performance included in the EIS: innovation enablers, firm activities, and innovation outputs. Although there are no straight forward relationships between level of performance and relative strengths, it can be noted that many of the "low innovators" have relative weaknesses in the dimension of innovation enablers which includes human resources.
  • Regional performance appears relatively stable since 2004. The pattern of innovation is quite stable between year 2004 and 2006, with only a few changes in group membership. More specifically, most of the changes are positive and relate to Cataluña, Comunidad Valenciana, Illes Balears, and Ceuta (Spain), Bassin Parisien, Est and Sud-Ouest (France), Unterfranken (Germany), Közép-Dunántúl (Hungary), Algarve (Portugal), and Hedmark og Oppland (Norway). Longer time series data would be needed to analyse the dynamics of regional innovation performance and how this might relate to other factors such as changes in GDP, industrial structure and public policies.

References

Regional Innovation Scoreboard (Hugo Hollanders (MERIT), Stefano Tarantola and Alexander Loschky (JRC))

RIS 2009 Downloads: Annex 4, Main Maps, Quintile Maps

Regional Innovation Scoreboard - Methodology report (Hugo Hollanders (MERIT), Stefano Tarantola and Alexander Loschky (JRC))