Greece an innovation laggard
Greece has made obvious leaps since 2015 in innovation, trying to close the gap with other pioneering countries. However, despite the improvement, its performance in various categories that make up the profile of an innovative country this year (funding and support, innovative businesses, intellectual property data, broadband penetration, human resources, etc) prove that Greece is far from the European average.
The country trails in areas such as the attractiveness of research systems, government funding for business research and development, exports of high- and medium-technology products, but also the use of information technologies by businesses to enhance workers’ skills.
Greece ranks 20th among 27 member states in the European Innovation Scoreboard of the European Commission. With an innovation performance of 80.2% of the EU average, it ranks among the moderately performing countries, together with Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia.
In fact, its performance is closer to those of the group of emerging countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary), than to those that register a better ranking in this sector (France, Cyprus, Germany, etc). This is because its score of 80.2% is below the average of countries with moderate innovation performance (89.7%).
The gap widens even more when compared to the frontrunners, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden.
According to an analysis of the European Innovation Scoreboard carried out by the National Documentation Center in its publication “Greece’s position in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2015-2022,” Greece’s performance in the innovation sector shows an increase of 24.1% in the 2015-2022 period and ranks as the third highest increase among the member states, after Cyprus and Spain.
The strengths of Greece’s innovation system in 2022 are the number of innovative enterprises, their cooperation with other enterprises, but also the people employed in innovative enterprises. Greece’s performance is high in the sale of innovative products, as well as in the adoption of innovative processes by SMEs.
