SWEDEN

Sweden is one of the Innovation leaders and the best performing EU Member State, although its rate of improvement is below that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Human resources, Finance and support and Firm investments and relative weaknesses are in Throughputs and Innovators.

Over the past 5 years, Finance and support and Throughputs have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from relatively strong growth in Venture capital (10.6%) and Community designs (7.3%). Performance in Firm investments, Linkages & entrepreneurship, Innovators and Economic effects has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in Innovative SMEs collaborating with others (-4.5%), the Firm renewal rate (-4.2%) and Knowledge-intensive services exports (-5.0%).