The Innovation Union Scoreboard provides an overview of the research and innovation performance of EU Member States and some associated and neighbouring countries at national and regional levels.

The annual Innovation Union Scoreboard provides a comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of the EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems.

Every two years the Innovation Union Scoreboard is accompanied by a Regional Innovation Scoreboard. The Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2014 provides a comparative assessment of innovation performance across 190 regions of the European Union, Norway and Switzerland using a limited number of research and innovation indicators.

What are the main indicators used for the Innovation Union Scoreboard?

The Innovation Union Scoreboard, following the methodology of the previous editions, captures a total of 25 different indicators, distinguishing between eight innovation dimensions and three main categories of indicators:

Enablers: the basic building blocks which allow innovation to take place – human resources, open, excellent and attractive research systems, and finance and support.

Firm activities: which capture innovation efforts in European firms – firm investments, linkages and entrepreneurship, and intellectual assets.

Outputs: show how this translates into benefits for the economy as a whole – innovators and economic effects.

Four different performance groups for Member States

The Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014 places Member States into four different performance groups:

Denmark (DK), Finland (FI), Germany (DE) and Sweden (SE) are “Innovation Leaders” with innovation performance well above that of the EU average.

Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Cyprus (CY), Estonia (EE), France (FR), Ireland (IE), Luxembourg (LU), Netherlands (NL), Slovenia (SI) and the United Kingdom (UK) are “Innovation followers” with innovation performance above or close to that of the EU average.

The performance of Croatia (HR), Czech Republic (CZ), Greece (EL), Hungary (HU), Italy (IT), Lithuania (LT), Malta (MT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Slovakia (SK) and Spain (ES) is below that of the EU average. These countries are ‘Moderate innovators’.

Bulgaria (BG), Latvia (LV) and Romania (RO) are “Modest innovators” with innovation performance well below that of the EU average.

Is the innovation performance of Member States converging? In which areas are the largest differences?

Altogether, this year’s results show that innovation performance among the Member States is converging but the convergence process slowed down. As a consequence the convergence level in innovation performance went back to the level of 2009.

The differences in performance across all Member States are smallest in Human resources. However, particularly large differences are in the international competitiveness of the science base (Open, excellent and attractive research systems), and business innovation cooperation.

In which dimensions has Europe improved most?

When looking at individual dimensions, Open, excellent and attractive research systems contributed most to the overall innovation performance over the last eight years, followed by growth in Human resources. Relatively good performance improvement is also observed in Innovation collaboration of SMEs and commercialisation of knowledge as measured by License and patent revenues from abroad.

In two dimensions the overall change of performance was negative: Firm investments and Finance and support.

What are the main conclusions of the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2014?

Apart from the innovation performance of the individual EU Member States as well as their strengths and weaknesses, the key conclusion is that the most innovative countries perform best on all dimensions: from research and innovation inputs, through business innovation activities up to innovation outputs and economic effects. Reflecting balanced national research and innovation systems, the performance of the Innovation leaders, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Finland, is not too different in all dimensions. The Innovation leaders are also mostly on top and clearly above the EU average. Only in the second dimension Open, excellent and attractive research system, does Germany score slightly below the EU average.

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