The EIS is the instrument developed at the initiative of the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to provide a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU Member States. The EIS 2007 includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States as well as for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, the US, Australia, Canada and Israel. Tables with definitions as well as comprehensive data sheets for every country are included in the Annexes. The EIS report and its annexes, accompanying thematic papers, interactive tables to view results and the indicators database are available online.

For the first time, Australia, Canada and Israel have been included as these countries provide interesting comparisons to EU Member States. The thematic reports that accompany this year's Scoreboard are on innovation in services, wider factors influencing innovation performance and on innovation efficiency. In addition, the 2007 EIS reflects on seven years experience in comparing countries' innovation performance and where the main future challenges lie.

The EIS indicators are grouped in different categories to capture key dimensions of the innovation process and are assigned to five dimensions:
1. Innovation drivers
2. Knowledge creation
3. Innovation & entrepreneurship
4. Applications
5. Intellectual property

Some Results:

• Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany and UK are the most innovative EU countries and ahead of the US.

• The innovation gap between the EU and its two main competitors, the US and Japan, has been decreasing but remains significant.

• Malta, Lithuania, Hungary, Greece, Portugal, Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, Bulgaria, Latria and Romania are the catching-up countries. Although their SII scores are significantly below the EU average, these scores are increasing towards the EU average over time with the exception of Croatia and Greece. Turkey is currently performing below the other countries included in the EIS.

• Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania are on track to reach the EU average within a decade. Meaning that those countries are in a position to close the gap with the innovation leaders in a shorter period of time than other most moderate innovators and catching-up countries.

• Croatia is in the group of "catching-up countries" and its innovation performance is below the EU average. Its innovation performance has remained stable over the last 5 years relative to the EU average. Croatia’s performance in Intellectual property is relatively weak. The country’s level of youth education attainment and public R&D expenditures is above EU average.

You can find the full version of the Scoreboard 2007 as a document on this webpage!

for further information please see:
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/metrics

Sources:
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=333&parentID=51
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=275&parentID=51
http://www.proinno-europe.eu/admin/uploaded_documents/European_Innovation_Scoreboard_2007.pdf