UNITED KINGDOM

For the UK, one of the Innovation leaders, innovation performance is above the EU27 average but the rate of improvement is negative and below that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in Human resources, Finance and support, Firm investments and Linkages & entrepreneurship and relative weaknesses are in Throughputs, Innovators and Economic effects.

Over the past 5 years, Finance and support has been the main driver of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in Broadband access by firms (14.9%). Performance in Linkages & entrepreneurship, Innovators and Economic effects has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in New-to-market sales (-12.7%) and New-to-firm sales (-10.7%). Performance in Firm investments and Throughputs has hardly improved.