Nederland blijft hangen als ‘kennisland’

Nieuws | de redactie

18 maart 2010 | Nederland zit nog sterker vast in de groep ‘volgers’ van de innovatieve landen in Europa. Nu dreigen ook Estland en Slovenië ons land in te gaan halen. Duitsland en Finland hebben hun positie als ínnovatieleiders verder versterkt. Een van de weinige succespunten van ons land is de toename van bèta-tech studenten.

EU27 Member States fall into the following four countrygroups:

• As in previous years, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and theUK are the Innovation leaders. However, of these countries, Germanyand Finland are improving their performance the fastest whileDenmark and the UK are stagnating.
• Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg,the Netherlands and Slovenia are the Innovation followers. Since2008, Cyprus, Estonia and Slovenia have progressed into this groupdue to steady improvement over recent years.
• Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Malta,Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain are the Moderateinnovators.
• Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania are the Catching-up countries withinnovation performance significantly below the EU27 average.However, all three countries are rapidly closing their gap to theaverage performance level of the EU27, and Bulgaria and Romaniahave been improving their performance the fastest of all MemberStates.

The Netherlands is one of the Innovation followers. Itsinnovation performance is just above the EU27 average but the rateof improvement is below that of the EU27. Relative strengths,compared to the country’s average performance, are in Finance andsupport and Linkages & entrepreneurship while relativeweaknesses are in Firm investments and Innovators.

Over the past 5 years, Human resources and Finance and supporthave been the main drivers of the improvement in innovationperformance, in particular as a result from strong growth inS&E and SSH graduates (10.4%) and Broadband access by firms(12.3%). Performance in Firm investments and Linkages &entrepreneurship has worsened, in particular due to a decrease inNon-R&D innovation expenditures (-1.5%) and the Firm renewalrate (-4.4%).
 
A detailed country profile is shown for each country including therelative strengths and weaknesses in innovation performance and itsmain drivers of innovation growth. For each country detailed datatables are available from the INNO Metrics website (http://www.proinno-europe.eu/metrics).