Ireland remains a follower rather than a leader when it comes to innovation, according to a new study from the European Commission.
The Innovation Union Scoreboard, which assesses the performances of EU Member States, has lumped Ireland in with nine other countries as being close to the EU average when it comes to innovation.
Within the EU, Sweden is the most impressive performer followed by Denmark, Finland and Germany. These countries are all above the EU average in terms of innovation.
The UK, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, France, Cyprus, Slovenia and Estonia, in that order, form the next group and are deemed to be innovation followers.
According to the scoreboard, Ireland's relative strengths are in human resources, and open, excellent and attractive research systems and outputs, all of which are deemed to be above average. However, it shows weaknesses in a number of ares including finance and support, linkages and entrepreneurship, intellectual assets and innovators.
The scoreboard also says high growth is observed in Ireland for Community trademarks, community designs and license and patent revenues from abroad. But a decline is observed for SMEs introducing product or process innovations.
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, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway and Switzerland.
"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," said Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.
"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,” she added.
The figures show that the EU is failing to close the innovation performance gap with its main international competitors: the US and Japan.
In addition, while the EU still maintains a clear lead over the emerging economies of India and Russia, Brazil is making steady progress, and China is catching up rapidly.
