The annual European Innovation Scoreboard highlights the commitment of the EU and its Member States to fostering innovation. Switzerland has maintained its position as the most innovative European country, with a performance of 139.6% of the EU average. It has scored particularly highly in education-related indicators, scientific publications, and environment-related indicators. Also in the top 5 are Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands.
The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) provides a comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of EU Member States and 11 European countries and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems. It empowers countries to identify areas for improvement. The EIS 2023 report is the third edition published using the new measurement framework introduced in 2021. This shows the average of the normalised scores of the 32 indicators.
Switzerland has again scored exceptionally with a performance at 139.6% of the EU average, followed by Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Switzerland has the highest performance in six indicators: New doctorate graduates (218.7), International scientific co-publications (274.9), Foreign doctorate students (330.5), Public-private co-publications (468.0), Resource productivity (192.0), and Air emissions by fine particulates (132.6). The country’s relative weaknesses are associated with government support for business R&D Environment-related technologies, Medium and high-tech goods exports, Innovative SMEs collaborating with others and venture capital expenditure.
While venture capital expenditure was the country’s weakness in 2022, there has been a strong increase in this indicator since 2016. A strong decrease was recorded in the indicators Sales of innovative products, SMEs with product innovations, and Design applications in the same period. Since 2022, there has been a strong increase in the indicators Number of employed ICT specialists, Job-to-job mobility of Human Resources in Science and Technology and Environment-related technologies but a strong decrease in Design applications, Most cited publications and Lifelong learning.
Switzerland’s performance lead gets smaller
Switzerland’s performance is decreasing and is lower than the rate of increase of the EU, and its performance lead over the EU is becoming smaller. The performance of the EU innovation system has improved by 8.5 percentage points between 2016 and 2023, showing a modest increase between 2016 and 2018 and a more rapid increase between 2019 and 2022, followed by a smaller increase in 2023.
(Press release/RAN)
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