INNOVATION STATISTICS:Our overall performance according to the latest EU Innovation Scoreboard is fair, but far from outstanding, writes FRANK DILLON
THE LATEST EUROPEAN Union Innovation Scoreboard shows that Ireland is in the second division of overall innovation performance, with a ranking of ninth out of the 27 states in the EU, when measured across a broad range of criteria. The report uses 25 indicators across three categories: “enablers” – external to the firm – “firm activities” and “outputs”. It places Ireland in the category of “innovation followers”, with a performance comparable to that of Austria, France, Belgium and the UK
The “innovation leaders” are Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany, while the poorest performances are registered by Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. The report is a significant barometer of the health of the knowledge economy and will be used to track Ireland’s progress towards its Lisbon goals, according to Graham Love of Science Foundation Ireland.
While the overall performance in this report can be said to be reasonable, especially considering the state of the economy, Love says it highlights areas of weakness and provides a focus for action in a number of categories in which we perform badly.
“Despite a below-average level of ‘public RD expenditure’, Ireland achieves above average in ‘international scientific co-publications’ and ‘top 10 per cent most cited scientific publications worldwide’ and we do very well in ‘licence and patent revenues from abroad’ – albeit that this is driven by our multinational sector. So, overall, we are delivering very good bang for buck in the science area,” says Love. “However, we are not so good on SME innovation and very poor on venture capital.
“A key message of the report is that if you want to be in the ‘innovation leader’ group, you have to perform well in all categories. You can’t compensate for poor performance in some areas by good performance in others.”
Being an innovation “follower” is not a bad situation to be in strategically, as followers can often capitalise on the heavy investment of innovation leaders to deliver good results with lower investment, notes Prof Martin Curley, director of Intel Labs Europe.
“Our performance is skewed heavily by the performance of the multinational sector and our rate of scientific publication,” says Curley. “In the case of a high rate of scientific publication – which is an asset – without an ability to convert this into real value, all we are doing is enabling others to compete better with us. We need to strengthen other areas of our national innovation and research systems to better capitalise on this asset, with more emphasis on applied and engineering-led research.”
Damini Kumar, Ireland’s EU innovation ambassador and director of design and creativity at NUI Maynooth, agrees with Love that we need to address the weaker areas to get into the top tier. “I think the most important outcome in this report is within the linkages, and entrepreneurship and innovator, indicators,” she says.
“It is clear that Irish SMEs are suffering, as the scoreboard shows a strong decline in ‘innovative SMEs collaborating with others’ and ‘SMEs introducing product or process innovations’. It is critical that we learn from this.”
Kumar says there is a need to devise programmes accessible to a greater number, and more diverse variety, of businesses in order to motivate SMEs that have the potential to innovate. We can learn much from the experiences of others too.
“Finland, which has a similar population to Ireland, is in the ‘innovation leader’ grouping because it set up an infrastructure to enable innovation in all sectors in its economy in the last recession. Ireland has a lot to learn from it,” she says.
Another area of poor growth is in the finance support indicators for “venture capital”. This must be addressed, as it is critical for entrepreneurs and businesses.
Mark Ryan, country manager for Accenture in Ireland, says the report highlights the need for a more joined-up innovation strategy to support SMEs. “There needs to be a vision that encompasses areas such as the type of graduates we produce, the sectors we focus on and the linkages between the business community, academic bodies, the public sector and the business environment, including the tax structure,” he says. “We need to move away from an entitlement culture, with regard to grants, to one that offers targeted support for good ideas and rewards for high performance.”
Dr Pat Frain, director of NovaUCD and 2011 chair of ProTon Europe – the pan-European association of knowledge transfer organisations linked to universities and public research organisations – notes that the scoreboard also shows the US is holding its lead over the EU27 due to higher scores in licence and patent revenues from abroad, public-private co-publications, tertiary education and business RD expenditure trends.
“The report confirms that the US performance reflects a strong innovation system characterised by good levels of tertiary education, good linkages between the public science system and the private sector, strong private investment in RD and successful commercialisation of technological knowledge,” he says.
Frain says the commission has recognised that Europe will need to move away from business-as-usual and make innovation its overarching policy objective. Among the specific priorities is the development of long-term strategic partnerships between universities to create the trust necessary for licensing and collaboration opportunities.
The full report is available at ec.europa.eu
Innovation groups
Leaders: Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Germany (all indicating a performance well above that of the EU27 average)
Followers: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and the UK (performance close to that of the EU27 average)
Moderate innovators: Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain (below that of the EU27 average)
Modest innovators: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania (performance well below that of the EU27 average)
