EU: Denmark Is Innovation Leader

17 Nov 2012

Denmark comes top in the European Commission’s Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012. The ranking “Innovation leader” is mainly due to the strong performance of the Copenhagen Region, which offers a highly educated work force, innovative SMEs, and strong public-private collaboration in R&D.

The European Commission’s report Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2012 (RIS) provides a comparative assessment of innovation performance across regions of the European Union, Croatia, Norway and Switzerland. Denmark is placed in the best performing group “Innovation leader”. The Copenhagen Region and Region Midtjylland get the main credit for the top ranking.

As a regional innovation leader the Copenhagen Region scores high across a number of indicators, including public and private R&D expenditures, innovative activity of SMEs, public-private collaboration in research and innovation, development of technological and non-technological innovations, number of patents, as well as commercialisation of innovative products, and employment in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services.

-The Regional Innovation Scoreboard confirms that Copenhagen is an outstanding innovation hub. We have a highly-educated work force, Danish SME’s are very innovative and successfully bring ideas to market, and the public-private collaboration in research and development is almost second to none. In a few months, the Danish government will launch its first national innovation strategy, which will further strengthen Denmark’s innovation focus and competences, says Claus Lønborg, CEO Copenhagen Capacity.

The 2012 Regional Innovation Scoreboard replicates the methodology used at national level in the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS), using 12 of the 24 indicators used in the IUS for 190 regions across Europe. The main results of the grouping analysis show four performance groups similar to those identified in the Innovation Union Scoreboard, ranging from Innovation leaders to Modest innovators. Denmark’s other regions are “innovation followers,” which is the second best performance group.

Source: http://www.copcap.com/content/us/quick_links/news/latest_news/2012/news_4th_quarter_2012/eu_denmark_is_innovation_leader