European Innovation Research Articles

Methodology for Calculating the European Innovation Scoreboard—Proposition for Modification

The primary purpose of this article is to identify determinants affecting the Summary Innovation Index and, consequently, the positions of countries on the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). Then, based on the identified determinants, these countries are ranked using the linear ordering method. This article presents the concept of innovation as an unwavering subject of interest for researchers from around the world. Issues relating to measuring innovation, which is necessary for the efficient management of an organization, as well as to the study of innovation in individual countries, are discussed. Special attention is drawn to the methodological aspects of constructing the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). The identification of determinants affecting the level of the Summary Innovation Index is performed through stepwise regression. This makes it possible to reduce the number of factors utilized in the EIS ranking procedure from 27 to 22. This was the inspiration to apply an innovative approach and use the linear ordering method, in order to show that it is possible to obtain a ranking that is very similar to the EIS ranking with a reduced number of indicators. These results may be significant, both for units developing this type of ranking and for users, such as decision-makers, using the results to make strategic decisions. In our opinion, this innovative approach—that is, using the linear ordering method and a reduced number of indicators—makes it possible to create a more transparent EIS ranking. This article is of theoretical, methodological, and empirical interest.

Trends of Using Sensory Evaluation in New Product Development in the Food Industry in Countries That Belong to the EIT Regional Innovation Scheme.

Sensory evaluation plays an important role in New Product Development (NPD) in food industry. In the present study, the current trends of using sensory evaluation in NPD in the food industry in countries that belong to EIT Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) were identified. The research was conducted in the first quarter of 2020. Computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI) technique for survey data collection was used. The sample included 122 respondents representing RIS countries that are the EU Member States and European Horizon 2020 Associated Countries that are classified as modest and moderate innovators according to European Innovation Scoreboard. The analysis presented in the paper allowed to describe the methods of sensory evaluation that can be used to support NPD in the food industry, identify the trends of using sensory evaluation in NPD in the food industry companies in RIS countries. The research results showed that almost 70% of companies apply sensory evaluation methods in NPD. The larger the company, the more often the methods of sensory evaluation are used in NPDs. Almost 60% of companies employing 51–100, 101–1000 and more than 5000 people, respectively declare the use of expert (analytical) test. However, regardless of size, most companies prefer consumer (affective) test to expert tests. Based on the results, it seems that the potential of usage sensory evaluation methods is not yet fully exploited in the food industry.

Public health and clinical approach to proactive management of frailty in multidimensional arena.

Demographic changes have forced communities and people themselves to reshape ageing concepts and approaches and try to develop actions towards active and healthy ageing. In this context, the European Commission launched different private-public partnerships to develop new solutions and answers on questions related to this topic. The European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing, including topic related action groups as well reference sites committed towards a common action to facilitate active and healthy ageing, has contributed key elements for interventions, scaled up best practices and evaluated impact of their action to drive innovation across many regions in Europe over the past years. This paper describes action taken by A3 action group in the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. This paper gives an overview of how the partnership combined the view on frailty coming from public health as well as the clinical management. Within different European regions, to tackle frailty, EIPonAHA partners have conceptualized functional decline and frailty, making use of good practice models working well on community programs. The A3 Group of EIPonAHA has worked alongside a process of innovation, targeting all ageing citizens with the clear goal of involving communities in the preventive approach. Engagement needs of older people with a focus on functionally rather than disease management as primary objective is considered as an overarching concept, also embracing adherence, compliance, empowerment, health literacy, shared decision-making, and activation. Furthermore, training of staff working with ageing people across all sectors needs to be implemented and evaluated in future studies.

The political economy of euro area sovereign debt restructuring

The establishment of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (SDRM) is one of the important issues in the academic debate on a viable constitution for the European Monetary Union (EMU). Yet the topic seems to be taboo in official reform contributions to the debate. Against this backdrop, the article identifies the SDRM interests of key players, including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank and national governments. The empirical section takes advantage of the recently established EMU Positions Database. The findings confirm political economy expectations: Low-debt countries support an EMU constitution that includes an insolvency procedure whereas a coalition of high-debt countries and European institutions oppose it. The analysis points towards a possible political-economic equilibrium for coping with sovereign insolvencies: an institutional set-up without an SDRM and with hidden transfers. Recent European fiscal innovations in response to the Covid-19 solvency shock confirm this prediction.

Circular Bioeconomy Business Models to Overcome the Valley of Death. A Systematic Statistical Analysis of Studies and Projects in Emerging Bio-Based Technologies and Trends Linked to the SME Instrument Support

Reducing the environmental pressure along the products life cycle, increasing efficiency in the consumption of resources and use of renewable raw materials, and shifting the economic system toward a circular and a climate-neutral model represent the heart of the current macro-trends of the European Union (EU) policy agendas. The circular economy and bioeconomy concepts introduced in the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan and the Bioeconomy Strategy support innovation in rethinking economic systems focusing on market uptaking of greener solutions based on less-intensive resource consumption. In recent decades, industrial research has devoted enormous investments to demonstrate sustainable circular bio-based business models capable of overcoming the “Valley of Death” through alternative strategic orientations of “technological-push” and “market-pull”. The study highlights industrial research’s evolution on bio-based circular business model validation, trends, and topics with particular attention to the empowering capacity of start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to close the loops in renewable biological use and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The research methodology involves a bibliographic search based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Data Hub investigation to understand SMEs’ key success factors and start-ups of the circular bioeconomy sector. Eco and bio-based materials, nutraceuticals, and microalgae represent the most sustainable industry applications, leading to circular bioeconomy business models’ future perspective.

New Energy Policy Directions in the European Union Developing the Concept of Smart Cities

In the context of the European Union promoting clean energy, sustainability and better living conditions for its citizens, the development of smarts cities is an initiative supported at the European Union level, in line with the new energy policies of the European Union promoted by the package “Clean Energy for All Europeans”. The concept of smart cities gains increasing importance in the European Union, a fact that is reflected in the project “European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities” of the European Commission. Smart cities are a practical example of how the new energy policies shape the lives of the European Union citizens, trying to improve it. As a consequence, new business models arise in big cities, involving the use of technology for better living conditions. These new, technology-based business models are important, as they improve the life quality of the inhabitants, they reduce the climate change impact, and they contribute as well to job creation in the IT-industry, promoting innovation. They have as well a social impact, as they bring experts from energy policies, business, economics, legal and IT together in order to project a new type of city—the smart city. The research hypothesis of the present article is that there is a high acceptance towards the concept of smart cities at the European Union level and that this concept could be implemented with the help of information technology and of artificial intelligence. This way, legal provisions, economic measures and IT-tools work together in order to create synergy effects for better life quality of the citizens of the European Union. The research hypothesis is analyzed by means of the questionnaire as a qualitative research method and is as well assessed by using case studies (e.g., Austria, Finland, Romania). The novelty of the case studies is that the development of smart cities is analyzed due to the new trend towards sustainability in two countries with different living conditions in the European Union.

Corrigendum to: The European Heart Journal Digital Health and Innovations Team, Deputy Editor Panos Vardas, Associate Editors Folkert W. Asselbergs and Maarten van Smeden

Corrigendum to: The European Heart Journal Digital Health and Innovations Team, Deputy Editor Panos Vardas, Associate Editors Folkert W. Asselbergs and Maarten van Smeden

Open innovation in the face of the COVID‐19 grand challenge: insights from the Pan‐European hackathon ‘EUvsVirus’

Being a grand challenge of global scale, the COVID‐19 pandemic requires collective and collaborative efforts from a variety of actors to enable the expected scientific advancement and technological progress. To achieve such an open innovation approach, several initiatives have been launched in order to leverage potential distributed knowledge sources that go beyond those available to any single organization. A particular tool that has gained some momentum during COVID‐19 times is hackathons, which have been used to unleash the innovation potential of individuals who voluntarily came together, for a relatively short period of time, with the aim to solve specific problems. In this paper, we describe and analyze the case of the hackathon EUvsVirus, led by the European Innovation Council. EUvs Virus was a 3‐day online hackathon to connect civil society, innovators, partners, and investors across Europe and beyond in order to develop innovative solutions to coronavirus‐related challenges. We have identified four dimensions to explore hackathons as a crowdsourcing tool for practicing effective open innovation in the face of COVID‐19: broad scope, participatory architecture, online setting, and community creation. We discuss how these four elements can play a strategic role in the face of grand challenges, which require, as in the case of the COVID‐19 pandemic, both urgent action and long‐term thinking. Our case analysis also suggests the need to look beyond the ‘usual suspects’, through knowledge recombination with atypical resources (e.g., retired experts, graduate students, and the general public). On this basis, we call for a broader perspective on open innovation, to be extended beyond openness across organizational boundaries, and to explore the role of openness at societal level.

Value from health data: European opportunity to catalyse progress in digital health

Value from health data: European opportunity to catalyse progress in digital health

Contextualizing Security Innovation: Responsible Research and Innovation at the Smart Border?

Current European innovation and security policies are increasingly channeled into efforts to address the assumed challenges that threaten European societies. A field in which this has become particularly salient is digitized EU border management. Here, the framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI) has recently been used to point to the alleged sensitivity of political actors towards the contingent dimensions of emerging security technologies. RRI, in general, is concerned with societal needs and the engagement and inclusion of various stakeholder groups in the research and innovation processes, aiming to anticipate undesired consequences of and identifying socially acceptable alternatives for emerging technologies. However, RRI has also been criticized as an industry-driven attempt to gain societal legitimacy for new technologies. In this article, we argue that while RRI evokes a space where different actors enter co-creative dialogues, it lays bare the specific challenges of governing security innovation in socially responsible ways. Empirically, we draw on the case study of BODEGA, the first EU funded research project to apply the RRI framework to the field of border security. We show how stakeholders involved in the project represent their work in relation to RRI and the resulting benefits and challenges they face. The paper argues that applying the framework to the field of (border) security lays bare its limitations, namely that RRI itself embodies a political agenda, conceals alternative experiences by those on whom security is enacted upon and that its key propositions of openness and transparency are hardly met in practice due to confidentiality agreements. Our hope is to contribute to work on RRI and emerging debates about how the concept can (or cannot) be contextualized for the field of security—a field that might be more in need than any other to consider the ethical dimension of its activities.

Cinderella lost? Barriers to the integration of energy Social Sciences and Humanities outside academia

It is now widely recognized that current energy challenges may be better addressed through the support of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) expertise. However, the effective integration of SSH in the energy-related sectors is still hampered by a series of barriers. While these barriers have been studied in current inter and transdisciplinary projects within academic environments, this paper is aimed at exploring them outside the academia, where energy-SSH topics are developed via the different careers’ paths. Our analysis draws from a questionnaire/public discussion with one hundred policy workers, and of thirty interviews with stakeholders from business, NGOs and European Technology & Innovation Platforms. Results show that the integration of energy-SSH into policy and business can take place at several levels, from the employment of SSH-experts within teams to light use of outputs from SSH reports. Projects which seek interdisciplinarity may need to more fully evaluate and acknowledge the specific competencies required and possessed by SSH practitioners. Much of the potential for energy-SSH collaboration is still under-exploited, in part due to a lack of knowledge of the specific tools SSH can offer, the lack of salience given to SSH skills, and difficulties in measuring the efficacy of interdisciplinary and SSH-integration approaches.

Urban Planning and European Innovation Policy: Achieving Sustainability, Social Inclusion, and Economic Growth?

Innovation has become a guiding principle for European Union policy. Funding schemes, research, and planning across all Member States are expected to be innovative. This article provides a critical analysis of the drivers and effects of this evolution. While positive results have been achieved due to innovation policies, this article proposes that taking a wider critical perspective reveals important caveats. The article zooms in on the EU’s innovation policies by analysing policy documents, projects funded, and on-the-ground impact on three citizen initiatives. The analysis asks whether and how the EU’s self-set goals of sustainability, social inclusion, and economic growth are approached and met in them. The findings suggest a problematic funnelling process. First, an emphasis on innovation is created with the objective of systematically unblocking resistance to the development and implementation of novelties in the name of competitiveness, job creation, and economic growth. Second, the idea of innovation is very loosely defined, while, when translated into urban planning, it is interpreted narrowly in terms of efficiency and behavioural change, digitalization, and smart technologies. As a result, (narrowly defined) innovation-led economic growth begins to supersede alternative values and visions for the future of European cities and regions. This can represent a problem for EU Member States as it creates a very limited, risk-based, and divisive direction of development. To contribute to the (re-)establishment of alternatives, this article finally offers policy recommendations primarily concerned with the reinstatement of the public interest beyond innovation-centred planning perspectives.

STRATEGIC ORIENTATION OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY REGULATION: UKRAINE AND EU INTEGRATION PROCESS

The article reveals scientific approaches to the creation of strategic guidelines for European integration processes based on the prediction of indicators of innovative development, considering international experience. This will make it possible to achieve the effectiveness of the processes of regulating innovation activity in the national economy and accelerate the pace of its development. The article proposes to identify relevant indicators of innovation activity to promote innovation changes based on the analysis of the overall innovation index of countries using econometric instruments. The characteristics of the process of introducing innovations in Ukraine are given in accordance with the individual components of the overall innovation index, which, according to the results of the calculation of the European Innovation Scoreboard, gives an idea of the various categories of countries-innovators in terms of the degree of innovative support for their economies. Based on the analysis of international statistical reporting, trends in the development of the innovation index in Ukraine and the European Union for a short-term period are established. Based on the Gompertz method, it is shown how the dynamics of each indicator will change, depending on the obtained predictive values of innovation development indices. This allows to determine the significance of regulatory instruments and generate appropriate forecasts. The methodology for finding regulatory instruments in the innovation development management system is developed depending on the speed of management intervention in the process of stimulating innovative changes. Strategic guidelines for the use of instruments for managing innovative development are formed depending on each index specifically. The content of the instruments is proposed depending on the priorities of the European integration activity and the influence of management on the formation of reforms, which will ensure the targeting of innovative regulatory initiatives in precisely those areas where the response of the national economy to the implemented influences will be most effective.

Internationalisation, innovation, and academic–corporate co-publications

Research policy often asks for international academic collaboration or collaborations between universities and other actors in society. To improve the understanding of such collaborations, a systematic analysis of academic–corporate co-publications was conducted, with a focus on the international dimension. Based on the global volume of publications in the Scopus database, one result is that academic–corporate co-publications enjoy a higher citation impact than other types of publications. Another result is that such co-publications are to a large extent internationally co-authored. Studies of ten countries and the ten plus ten largest academic and corporate institutions in these countries in terms of academic–corporate co-publications confirm these results and provide further details. Finally, the results indicate a positive correlation between the share of academic–corporate co-publications in a country and the innovation performance in indices such as the Global Innovation Index and the European Innovation Scoreboard. This study highlights the need to consider the numbers of co-authors and the high share of international co-publications when analyses are based on academic–corporate co-publications. Even though academic–corporate co-publications only reflect a small part of all academic–corporate collaborations, academic–corporate co-publications are shown to be useful as one of many potential tools to assess collaborations between academic and corporate actors and associated investments in research and innovation. It is also argued that the results of the study support policies promoting academic–corporate collaborations leading to co-publications.

Innovative efficiency of European countries and Ukraine according to the evaluation of the European innovation board

Development of most countries depends on an effective innovation policy. Monitoring the innovation efficiency of both individual countries and the European Union as a whole is an integral part of decision-making to improve innovation policy. The European Commission’s annual report “European Innovation Scoreboard” for each EU member state and some other European countries provides indicators that characterize the differences and dynamics of innovation indicators. The methodology of the European Innovation Scoreboard, the composition and number of indicators are constantly changing. The article analyzes the results of the evaluation of innovation efficiency of countries taking into account the changes that have occurred in the methodology of the European Innovation Scoreboard in 2021 and the results of the evaluation of Ukraine against the European countries. There was a decrease of 5.3 % — to 29.8 % — of the consolidated Innovation Index of Ukraine for 2014–2021 compared to the EU in 2014. An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the innovation system of Ukraine is provided. Since domestic statistics is not available for all indicators, the data obtained for Ukraine is “less reliable”. Ukraine needs to improve its statistical survey of innovation and to radically revisit innovation policy.

The Political Economy of Euro Area Sovereign Debt Restructuring

The establishment of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (SDRM) is one of the important issues in the academic debate on a viable constitution for the European Monetary Union (EMU). Yet the topic seems to be taboo in official reform contributions to the debate. Against this backdrop, the article identifies the SDRM interests of key players, including the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Central Bank and national governments. The empirical section takes advantage of the recently established EMU Positions Database. The findings confirm political economy expectations: Low-debt countries support an EMU constitution that includes an insolvency procedure whereas a coalition of high-debt countries and European institutions oppose it. The analysis points towards a possible political-economic equilibrium for coping with sovereign insolvencies: an institutional set-up without a SDRM and with hidden transfers. Recent European fiscal innovations in response to the Covid-19 solvency shock confirm this prediction.

IoT innovation clusters in Europe and the case for public policy

Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) is currently developing fast and its potential as driver of innovative solutions is increasing, pushed by technologies, networks, communication, and computing power, and has the potential to drive the development of technological ecosystems, such as innovation clusters. Innovation clusters are agglomeration of enterprises and research organizations, which cooperate, interact and compete, generating innovation and driving the growth of ecosystems. The narrative around innovation clusters has been developing since many years and policy-makers seek to use such clusters as a policy instrument to support the growth of technology on the one hand and regional and sectoral development on the other hand. This policy paper expands an empirical study on IoT innovation clusters in Europe and places it within the current debate around clusters and innovation clusters to provide evidence-based advice to policy-makers on what may and may not work as public policy measures. The paper highlights the findings of the interaction with several hundred European IoT innovation clusters and points out their points of view on their own creation factors, operational characteristics, and success stories, as well as their expectations in respect to policy interventions for IoT and for clusters. Suggestions for IoT policy-making are provided. The paper has also undertaken an extensive review of up-to date research on innovation cluster creation and performance, thoroughly analyzing the real possibility to define causal relationships between clusters, productivity and economic growth, and business performance, and providing suggestions for policy-makers on the approach to cluster policy.

Innowacyjność regionów w Polsce – stan i uwarunkowania

The aim of the study was to assess the diversification of the degree of innovation in the Polish regions. For the analysis 21 partial indicators were used, these were grouped into four areas describing the level of innovation in each region (framework conditions, investments, innovative activities, influence). The data was taken from the European Innovation Scoreboard 2021. Hellwig’s development pattern method was used in the research. A ranking was created based on the synthetic variable, and typological groups of regions were extracted with a similar development level in each of the assessed areas. The results obtained from organizing and classifying individual voivodeships showed the distance between individual voivodeships with regard to the examined criteria, and allowed for the creation of a qualitative and quantitative description of the existing disproportions. The most innovative region in Poland is the statistically separate Warsaw capital district. At the same time, the difference between the rest of the Mazowiecki region and its capital is clearly visible, as well as the necessity to further concentrate European Union resources there in order to stimulate the development of the region. Among the leaders of innovation, apart from the Warsaw district, are the Małopolski, Pomorski, and Dolnośląski regions. The Podkarpacki region holds a relatively high position in the areas of investment, innovative activities and influence (concerning employment, selling innovative products and sustainable development), and is situated to the second (II) group. On the other hand its weakness include its framework conditions (human capital, attractive research systems and digitalization). The lowest level of innovation was recorded in the aforementioned Mazowieckie region (excluding Warsaw), and in the Świętokrzyski, Zachodniopomorski, and Warmiński-mazurski regions. Each voivodeship is distinguished by its specificity, hence the obtained results may constitute important indicators for local governments to adopt courses of action to stimulate the process of building regional innovation systems.

Наука и инновации в 2019–2020 гг.: ресурсное обеспечение, первые посткризисные оценки

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on research and development (R&D) was a major factor for the global innovation activity in 2020. Prior to the pandemic, global R&D spending by both governments and private capital had been steadily increasing for a decade, resulting in a doubling of spending. In the US, growth was slower than in other countries, especially compared to China, causing the US share of global R&D to decline. At the end of 2020, it was clear that China's economy ended the year with fewer losses compared to the developed world, and local companies continued to increase R&D spending, which will contribute to Chinese innovation competition in the coming years. This 2020 report consists of several thematic blocks which will be retained in subsequent annual editions. First, there is a review and analysis of the most relevant information on countries' expenditures on research and development (R&D), in particular, the estimates of expenditures according to R&D World, the volume of federal funding for R&D in the USA for 2021, and the results of the annual European Innovation Scoreboard rating of innovative companies. Secondly, the results of international patenting data by country and industry are presented, using the latest available data for 2019. Third, given the importance of private companies' capital for innovation activity, a separate block includes the results of initial public offerings (IPOs) in 2020 on major stock exchanges (USA) and other platforms, as well as data on mergers and acquisitions, which remain the most important alternative to public offerings for raising capital by technology companies. Finally, the last block deals with changes in the innovation development strategies of the leading countries. The focus here is made on the implications of Brexit for the science and technology development of the UK and the EU, taking into account the parties' agreement on a trade deal for the period after the country's exit from the Union since January 1, 2021.

The Impact of Venture Capital Expenditures on Innovation in Europe

We investigate the relationship between “Venture Capital Expenditures” and innovation in Europe. Data are collected from the European Innovation Scoreboard for 36 countries in the period 2010-2019. We perform Panel Data with Fixed Effects, Panel Data with Random Effects, Pooled OLS, WLS, Dynamic Panel. Results show that the level of Venture Capitalist Expenditure is positively associated to “Foreign Doctorate Students” and “Innovation Index” and negatively related to “Government Procurement of Advanced Technology Products”, “Innovators”, “Medium and High-Tech Products Exports”, “Public-Private Co-Publications”. In adjunct, cluster analysis is realized with the algorithm k-Means and the Silhouette coefficient, and we found the presence of four different clusters for the level of “Venture Capital Expenditures”. Finally, we propose a confrontation among 8 different algorithms of machine learning to predict the level of “Venture Capital Expenditures” and we find that the linear regression generates the best results in terms of minimization of MAE, MSE, RMSE.