The Commission has published the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) for 2008. The EIS is an attempt to benchmark, on a yearly basis, the innovation performance of Member States. Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark and the UK are the Innovation leaders, with innovation performance well above that of the EU average and all other countries. Ireland is amongst the Innovation followers, with innovation performance below those of the innovation leaders but above the EU average.

It was noted that Ireland's performance has been increasing fastest within the Innovation followers group, followed by Austria.

Chapter 6 of the Scorecard (which is available at http://www.proinno-europe.eu/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.display&topicID=437&parentID=51), contains details of each Member State.

According to the profile on Ireland, its relative strengths, compared to the country's average performance, are in

• human resources,
• throughputs and
• economic effects.

Ireland's relative weaknesses are in

• firm investments and
• linkages & entrepreneurship.