Innovation Start-Up, EU Innovation Scorecard, Industrial Innovation,

I have just been introduced to a new innovation consultant (Gareth Davies twitter pseudo, "@microsinger") via The Institute, IOM3.

He directs the innovation business at the start-up  g2innovation, UK . Hope I got that right, if not drop Gareth a line at the link above.

The site already points to a most useful Benchmark paper on the position of Innovation within the UK. The latter is provocatively, but justifiably,described as a follower rather than a leader in the field of Innovation. Well to be fair the graph of EU innovation countries places UK well above the EU average on a scale 0 to 100 in percentage points. Only four countries lead UK. Two countries (Germany & Finland-Nokia surely!) by 10% or 1 point, and  two countries (Denmark & Sweden by 15% or 1.5 points.)

I have dug out the references for my readers and added more important pointers just to keep my fellow country men on their toes, g2innovation is housed in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

 Industrial Innovation EU score card

Some EU innovation jargon

Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010

The 2010 Scoreboard draws on 25 research and innovation-related indicators and covers the 27 EU Member States, as well as Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The indicators are grouped into three main categories:

• "Enablers", i.e. the basic building blocks which allow innovation to take place (human resources, finance and support, open, excellent and attractive research systems)
• "Firm activities" which show how innovative Europe's firms are (firm investments, linkages & entrepreneurship, intellectual assets); and
• "Outputs" which show how this translates into benefits for the economy as a whole (innovators, economic effects).

The Scoreboard places Member States into the following four country groups (see figure 1 below):

• Innovation leaders: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden all show a performance well above that of the EU27 average.
• Innovation followers: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and the UK all show a performance close to that of the EU27 average.
• Moderate innovators: The performance of Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain is below that of the EU27 average.
• Modest innovators: The performance of Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania is well below that of the EU27 average.

Ebooks available from the EU site are:
1.  PDF version of the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010 [2 MB]
2. Innovation Union Scoreboard 2010 - Methodology Report [380 KB]
3. Country profiles translation in 22 EU languages [450 KB]

Best of Luck to our colleagues in Glasgow and to the whole Innovation Community - true to say the world needs you more than ever!