Ireland tops European Strong Innovators – KTI

Knowledge Transfer Ireland Director, Alison Campbell has welcomed the news that Ireland has scored top marks in the 2016 European Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard in the Strong Innovators category. The survey published annually measures innovation amongst EU member states and their competitors using 25 different indicators, with Ireland scoring a performance of 90%-120% of the EU average.

Ireland led the way in the Strong Innovators category which it shares with Austria, Belgium and the UK among others. Ireland also came in as overall leader – ahead of Germany, Luxembourg, France and Austria – in the Innovators dimension of the report which measures the number of firms involved in innovation activities. In addition, Ireland performed well above the EU average on License and Patent Revenues from Abroad and International Scientific Co-publications. Other strong performing indicators measured in the report are Exports of Knowledge Intensive Services and Employment in Knowledge-Intensive Activities.

Irish performance has increased considerably in License and Patent Revenues from Abroad (29%), International Scientific Co-publications (7.3%), and New Doctorate Graduates are up by over 6%.

Speaking about the findings Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI) Director Dr Campbell said: “These results echo our own findings at KTI that show an increase in the level of business innovation through research in Ireland. KTI’s recently published Annual Knowledge Transfer Survey 2015 which tracks business engagement and commercialisation activity between industry and Irish research performing organisations (RPOs) found that 1,235 collaborative research programmes between industry and RPOs were underway at the end of 2015, in addition to the number of new products resulting from a licence that came from a research performing organisation last year jumping by 27%.”

Dr Campbell continued: “These national data coupled with the results of the European Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard should give confidence to enterprise engagement in research and innovation in Ireland. This is very encouraging as increased levels of innovation in business can only serve to create sustainable economic growth in addition to more and better jobs.”