The Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010

Based on the previous European Innovation Scoreboard, this new tool is meant to help monitor the implementation of the Innovation Union by providing a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of the EU27 Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems.

This is the tenth edition of the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS), which provides a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU27 Member States, under the EU Lisbon Strategy.

This new and improved Innovation Union Scoreboard highlights the innovation emergency in Europe. Innovation is as essential to a successful modern economy as water is to life. It is at the core of economic policy-making and the main way economies create jobs. So today’s Scoreboard is a central plank of the Europe 2020 Strategy. We want Member States to make full use of it to build on their strengths and to address weaknesses.

said Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.

The 2010 Scoreboard draws on 25 research and innovation-related indicators and covers the 27 EU Member States, as well as Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The indicators are grouped into three main categories:

• “Enablers”, i.e. the basic building blocks which allow innovation to take place (human resources, finance and support, open, excellent and attractive research systems)
• “Firm activities” which show how innovative Europe’s firms are (firm investments, linkages & entrepreneurship, intellectual assets); and
• “Outputs” which show how this translates into benefits for the economy as a whole (innovators, economic effects).

The Scoreboard places Member States into the following four country groups (see figure 1 below):

• Innovation leaders: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden all show a performance well above that of the EU27 average.
• Innovation followers: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and the UK all show a performance close to that of the EU27 average.
• Moderate innovators: The performance of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain is below that of the EU27 average.
• Modest innovators: The performance of Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania is well below that of the EU27 average.

More info

Innovation Union Scoreboard page
PDF version of the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010 [678 KB] Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010 – Methodology Report [380 KB]