14 januari 2005

Vertegenwoordigers van de Europese Commissie gaven aan dat de innovatierangorde van groot belang is omdat er verder gekeken wordt dan uitgaven voor onderzoek en ontwikkeling en de mogelijkheden worden geanalyseerd om fundamenteel onderzoek te vertalen naar te vermarkten producten, en als zodanig in banen en economische groei. Gnter Verheugen, de EU commissaris voor industrie en economische ontwikkeling, stelt: ‘The Innovation Scoreboard clearly shows that we have to do more for innovation. There is clear evidence that more innovative sectors tend to have higher productivity growth rates’. De Financial Times schrijft als volgt: ‘The EU’s “disappointing” performance masks striking differences between the 25 member states: the Commission ranks Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany as “leading countries” and states including the UK, France and Italy as “average performers”. Portugal, the Czech Republic, Greece and others are “catching up”, while states Spain and Poland are “losing ground”. Switzerland, which is not an EU member, comes second overall – ahead of both Japan and the US. The UK and Ireland – which have recently boasted high economic growth rates, low unemployment and which regularly score highly in surveys examining countries’ economic competitiveness – have both performed worse than in previous scoreboards’. Over Nederland wordt in de rapportage het volgende gesteld: ‘The Netherlands is an above average performer on the EIS, ranking 8th on the summary innovation index out of the EU 25 countries and 11th out of 33 countries. Its peer countries for performance include Belgium, Austria, the UK, France and Italy. However, for several years the trends have been negative and worrying. A concerted policy effort to increase the supply of new S&E graduates appears to be succeeding, with the rate increasing from 6 per thousand in 1998 to 7.3 per thousand in 2003. However, this is not enough and the Netherlands’ performance on this indicator is still only 60% of the EU average. The Netherlands performs near or well above the average for the other innovation driver indicators. It ranks second within the EU in broadband penetration rates (third in the world after Korea, based on the most recent data). For a highly developed economy, however, its performance on youth education is below expectations, at only 97% of the EU average. In contrast, both Austria and Belgium, similar sized economies within its peer group, perform above the EU average on this indicator. The Netherlands’ best performance is for innovation drivers, IPR, and knowledge creation. Good performance for drivers is due to above average performance on broadband penetration rates, life long learning, and tertiary education. The results for knowledge creation are due to a high percentage of firms that receive public funding for innovation. In contrast, business R&D expenditures are only at 80% of the EU average and have declined from a high of 1.14% in 1999 to 1.01% in 2003, most likely due to the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the off-shoring of R&D by a few major Dutch firms. Another strength is in IPR, due to excellent performance for triadic patents. However, many of these could be due to inventions by the foreign affiliates of Dutch firms, but with the patent owner registered in the Netherlands. This would overstate Dutch innovative capabilities. The trend performance for many of the indicators is near or below the EU average. The worst trend performance is for broadband penetration rates, but this is due to its lead position within Europe. Of greater concern is the declining trend for both public (2.1) and private R&D (2.2). The best trend performance is for EPO patents and community trademarks’. De innovatiekracht van Nederland is dus over het algemeen niet slecht, maar gezien de negatieve tendens wel zorgwekkend. Het meest in het oog lopend evenwel is de zorg van de Europese Commissie op het onderwijssysteem in Nederland. Dit kan hele grote consequenties hebben voor toekomstige rangordes. Het onderzoek is hier te downloaden.