BizKnowledge Watch

The 2008 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) recently published shows the European Union making substantial progress in its innovation performance preceding the financial crisis. The relative innovation gap with the US and Japan was reduced, in particular amid strong progress by many new Member States such as Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria. Across the EU, particular progress was made in human resources and availability of finance for innovation. However, innovative investments by businesses are still relatively weak especially if compared to the US and Japan.

The 2008 European Innovation Progress Report (EIPR) was published alongside the EIS and presents independent expert analysis of developments in national innovation policies and governance, building on country reports prepared by independent experts. This shows a trend towards support for innovative start-ups and strategies which address new challenges such as climate change and resource productivity.

Commissioned by the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission, the EIS is prepared by the Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) and the Innovation Progress Report by a consortium of experts led by the University of Athens and Technopolis Group.

Both documents are available on the internet site of the PRO INNO initiative: EIS 2008 and EIPR 2008

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Innovation & Entrepreneurship. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.