Memo from European Commission about Innovation in Europe.
A good approach to Innovation figures and mapping.
Innovation is a key driver of economic growth
and jobs. The Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012, published today, provides a
comparative assessment of how European regions perform with regard to innovation.
The report covers 190 regions across the European Union, Croatia, Norway and
Switzerland. The Regional Innovation Scoreboard is based on the methodology of
the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IP/12/102).
The Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012
classifies European regions into four innovation performance groups, similarly
to the Innovation Union Scoreboard: there are 41 regions in the first group of "innovation
leaders", 58 regions belong to the second group of "innovation
followers", 39 regions are "moderate innovators" and 52 regions
are in the fourth group of "modest innovators".
The innovation performance varies more at
the regional than at the national level
The results show that there is considerable
diversity in regional innovation performance not only across Europe but also within
the Member States. Most of the European countries have regions at different
levels of innovation performance. The most pronounced examples are France and
Portugal: in both countries the performance of regions (including overseas
territories) ranges from innovation leaders to modest innovators. Other
countries with wide variations in performance are Czech Republic, Finland,
Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom: all have at
least one region in 3 different innovation performance groups. The most
homogenous countries are the moderate innovators Greece, Hungary, Poland and
Slovakia, where all regions except one each are also moderate innovators. The
situation is similar in Romania and Bulgaria where most or even all regions are
modest innovators.
The most innovative regions
The most innovative regions in the EU are
typically in the most innovative countries: Sweden, Denmark, Germany and
Finland. In Germany, 12 out of 16 regions are innovation leaders. In Finland 3
out of 5 regions and in Sweden 5 out of 8 regions are innovation leaders. Only
in Denmark, the majority of the regions are innovation followers, and 2 out of
5 regions are innovation leaders, including the capital region of Copenhagen
and Midtjylland. The regional innovation diversity is very low in non-EU Switzerland,
which according to the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011 outperforms all EU
Member States: all Swiss regions except one are innovation leaders.
Innovation strengths and weaknesses
The analysed regions show diverse strengths
and weaknesses in their innovation performance. Similarly to the national
innovation leaders and followers, the majority of regional innovation leaders
and followers have a balanced innovation system, which means that they score
high across a number of various indicators such as public and private R&D
expenditures, innovative activity of SMEs, public-private collaboration in
research and innovation, development of technological and non-technological innovations,
number of patents, as well as commercialisation of innovative products and
employment in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services. The
moderate and modest innovation regions have a less balanced innovation
structure. In particular, they suffer from a relatively low innovation activity
of SMEs and very low business R&D expenditures. Moreover, in these regions
the innovation collaboration between enterprises as well as between enterprises
and public organisations is much below the European average. The result is a relatively
low number of patents and technological and non-technological innovative
products and solutions that are developed in moderate and modest innovator
regions.
Capital regions are often national
leaders, notably in less performing countries
In almost all analysed European countries capital
regions are the national innovation leaders. In some Member States the capital
regions play a particularly outstanding role so that the capitals outperform
the national average innovation performance by two broad performance groups.
This is the case in Czech Republic and Portugal, both of them being moderate
innovators, where their capital regions Praha and Lisboa belong to the European
regional innovation leaders.
In the countries that are identified as
moderate innovators by the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011, the most
innovative regions are typically the capital regions as well: Praha in Czech
Republic, Attiki in Greece, Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia, Közép-Magyarország (capital
region) in Hungary, Mazowieckie (Warsaw) in Poland and Lisboa in Portugal.
Similarly, in modest innovator Romania the Bucuresti-Ilfov region is much more
innovative than any other Romanian region. This is not the case in the
innovation leader countries where the innovation excellence is distributed more
equally throughout the countries.
Innovation performance in regions
relatively stable but some leaders emerge
Since 2007, the regional performance has been
relatively stable. Most European regions seem to maintain their innovation
potential and activity. However, there are clear upward movements. The number
of innovation leaders increased by 7 regions between 2007 and 2011. Four
regions improved from moderate or modest innovators to the category of
innovation followers. 8 regions are continuously improving their innovation performance
scoring higher in each of the three Scoreboards (2007, 2009, 2012): the German
Niedersachsen, French Bassin Parisien and Ouest, Italian Calabria and Sardegna,
Polish Mazowieckie, Portuguese Lisboa and the Swiss region of Ticino.
Leading regions with good access to EU
R&D grants
Most of the moderate and modest innovation
regions barely use Framework Programme funds but they are usually high users of
Structural Funds for business innovation. Several innovation leaders, on the
other hand, are very successful in attracting grants under the Research &
Development Framework Programme (FP): More than 90% of leading FP absorbers are
the regional innovation leaders. The Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012 shows
that at this stage there is a lack of common pattern linking innovation
performance and the use of EU funds in regions across time. For example, some
of the most dynamic upward movers like Bassin Parisien and Ouest were low users
of EU funds. At the same time, in the case of Calabria, Sardegna and
Mazowieckie the steady increase in innovation performance happened during a
period of increased use of EU funds.
Figure 1: Innovation performance by
regions
To better visualise the large variety in
innovation performance levels in Europe at regional level, each of the
performance group is divided into 3 further subgroups in figure 2, leading to a
total of 12 regional innovation performance groups.
Figure 2: RIS 2012 innovation performance
sub-groups
