UK ranked as one of Europe’s innovation leaders

Those in Britain who believe that innovation is one of the most important supply-side determinants of economic growth, improved trade performance and rising living standards will be cheered by the latest 2007 Innovation Scoreboard for the twenty-seven nations of the EU. Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Israel, Denmark, Japan, Germany, the UK and the US are ranked as Europe’s ‘innovation leaders’.

The EU press release says that

‘The UK performs particularly strongly in Innovation & entrepreneurship with a relatively high level on the indicator of Early-stage venture capital. It performs below the EU average in the dimension of Intellectual property with a relatively lower level on the indicators of Triad patents and Community designs. The analysis of innovation efficiency suggests that the UK is above the EU average in transforming innovation inputs into Applications, but below average in transforming such inputs into Intellectual property outputs.’

I produced a revision mind map on innovation a couple of years ago, it is still available on the web site here (in pdf format)