Switzerland again innovation leader in Europe

The most innovative countries perform well and clearly above the EU average in all areas: from research and higher education systems, through business innovation activities and intellectual assets up to innovation in SMEs and economic effects, reflecting balanced national research and innovation systems.

When looking at a wider European comparison, Switzerland is the overall innovation leader in Europe, outperforming all EU Member States (Figure 24). Switzerland’s strong performance is linked to being the best performer in 9 indicators, in particular in Open, excellent and attractive research systems where it has the best performance in all three indicators and Economic effects where it has best performance in two indicators (Employment in knowledge-intensive activities and License and patent revenues from abroad). Switzerland’s relative weakness is in having below EU average shares in SMEs collaborating with others (9.4% compared to 11.7% for the EU) and Exports of knowledge-intensive services (25.1% as compared to 45.3% for the EU).

Background
The 2014 Innovation Union Scoreboard draws on 25 different indicators, divided into three broad areas:

Enablers: the basic building blocks which allow innovation to take place - human resources, open, excellent and attractive research systems, and finance and support.

Firm activities: which capture innovation efforts in European firms - firm investments, linkages and entrepreneurship, and intellectual assets.

Outputs: show how this translates into benefits for the economy as a whole - innovators and economic effects.

The reports can be downloaded on the website of the European Commission.