José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, receives shamrock from Máire Geoghegan-Quinn (c), Member of the Commission in charge of Research, Innovation and Science on the occasion of St Patrick's Day, March 17, 2010. Irishwoman, Catherine Day, the  Secretary General of the EC, is on the left.

Ireland is in the group of innovation followers, with an innovation performance above the EU27 average, according to the 2009 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) published on Wednesday. Ireland's rate of improvement is just below that of the EU27. Relative strengths, compared to the country’s average performance, are in human resources and economic effects and relative weaknesses are in firm investments and throughputs.

The report says over the past 5 years, human resources and finance and support have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation performance, in particular as a result from strong growth in lifelong learning (13.7%), Private credit (12.7%) and broadband access by firms (26.9%). Performance in the metrics: firm investments, linkages & entrepreneurship, troughputs and innovators, has worsened, in particular due to a decrease in non-R&D innovation expenditures (-5.7%), innovative SMEs collaborating with others (-7.0%), community designs (-7.2%) and SMEs introducing product or process innovations (-3.3%).

The report ranks Europe’s innovation leaders as Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK, with Germany and Finland improving their performance fastest.

Most EU member states until 2008 were steadily improving their innovation performance. The economic crisis may, however, be hampering this progress, according to the EIS. Early indications show that the worst hit are member states with lower levels of innovation performance, potentially reversing the convergence process witnessed over recent years. Meanwhile, the latest statistics show that the EU is having difficulty in catching up with the US in innovation performance, although it maintains a clear lead over the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, despite rapid improvements in China.

"This scoreboard provides invaluable evidence on trends in innovation performance. The overall picture is positive, there are however some worrying signs and we will have to take this very seriously in developing the measures to accomplish what we just laid out in our Europe 2020 strategy. Increasing investment in research and innovation is the key to moving from crisis to sustainable prosperity. That is why the Commission is maintaining the 3% of GDP target for R&D investment in Europe and proposing realistic national targets with robust monitoring.” emphasised Vice-President Antonio Tajani, Commissioner for Entrepreneurship and Industry, and Research Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is leading a "cross-cutting approach to innovation" in the new Commission.

The EIS 2009 includes 29 innovation-related indicators with publicly available data from 2007/2008 and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States, as well as for Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The 29 indicators are grouped around three categories: enablers (human resources, finance and support), firm activities (firm investments, linkages & entrepreneurship, throughputs) and outputs (innovators, economic effects). It does not capture yet the full effects of the recent economic and financial crises.

EU27 Member States fall into the following four country groups:

• As in previous years, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK are the Innovation leaders. However, of these countries, Germany and Finland are improving their performance the fastest while Denmark and the UK are stagnating.

• Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia are the Innovation followers. Since 2008, Cyprus, Estonia and Slovenia have progressed into this group due to steady improvement over recent years.

• Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain are the Moderate innovators.

• Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania are the Catching-up countries with innovation performance significantly below the EU27 average. However, all three countries are rapidly closing their gap to the average performance level of the EU27, and Bulgaria and Romania have been improving their performance the fastest of all Member States.

For individual summaries of the innovation performance of all 27 Member States see here. 

The full report is available here.

SEE also Finfacts article, Ireland and leadership at a time of crisis  - - included comments on the Innovation Ireland taskforce.