Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015

Improving Europe's capacity to innovate and be globally competitive requires further efforts to encourage disruptive ideas and foster their commercial up-take. These are some of the conclusions to be drawn from the latest report on innovation in Europe.

The Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) provides an annual comparative assessment of the research and innovation performance of the EU Member States and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems.

It helps Member States assess areas in which they need to concentrate their efforts in order to boost their innovation performance. In addition, the Scoreboard covers Serbia, former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. On a smaller set of indicators, available internationally, it also covers Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and the US.

The European Commission's Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015 reveals that the EU’s overall level of innovation has remained stable. However, the crisis has left an impact on the private sector's innovative activity: the number of innovative firms is in decline, as are venture capital investment, SMEs’ innovations, patent applications, exports of high-tech products and sales of innovative products. While there have been improvements in human resources, business investments in research and development and the quality of science, these are not enough to result in a stronger innovation performance.