The innovation union scoreboard: Helping europe become more innovative

Abstract

In this contribution, we focus on the Europe 2020 growth strategy, its targets, initiatives, and on EU tools on growth, one of which is the 'Innovation Union Scoreboard' (IUS), which includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States and other countries, such as the US, Canada, or Japan. The main focus of this analysis in progress is drawing a picture about the European 2020 strategy in the center of innovation and analyzing the IUS structure from its beginnings in 2007 up to the newest IUS report. The results of the analysis revealed that the IUS 2011 distinguishes between 3 main types of indicators and 8 innovation dimensions, capturing in total 25 different indicators. The limitations of the IUS 2011 are that it does not capture the most recent changes in innovation performance or the impact of policies introduced in recent years, which may take some time to impact innovation performance. It also does not fully capture the impact of the global financial crisis on innovation performance. Whether or not the European Commission was able to overcome the difficulties of IUS2011 will be highlighted in an upcoming analysis of the IUS 2012 report, which will be published in 2013.