This year Malta moved up a rung on the European Innovation Scoreboard but still remains below par when compared to its European counterparts; however the country’s rate of improvement was judged to be above the EU average.
Malta’s overall rate of improvement was, in fact, in the region of six per cent, while the EU’s average innovation growth was gauged at just below two per cent.
But despite the positive rate of improvement, Malta was still ranked in a paltry 20th place out of the EU27 on the scoreboard.
In short, the country’s innovation strengths were identified as being in the areas of the availability of finance with which to carry out innovations and the economic rewards of innovation in terms of employment, exports and sales.
Malta’s weaknesses are, however, still outweighing its strengths. Such weaknesses, according to the study, include a lack of highly skilled, educated workers, entrepreneurial efforts and collaboration between firms, and the actual take up of innovation among Malta’s companies.
On the scoreboard’s 2009 version, which was published yesterday, Malta was moved up from the ‘catching-up’ countries, lowest rung on the innovation ladder, which groups countries with innovation performances that are well below the EU27 average but which are converging towards that average over time.
Over the past five years, the scoreboard report noted yesterday, the main driver in the improvement in Malta’s innovation performance has been in the area of throughputs – intellectual property rights generated as a throughput in the innovation process and technological balance of payment flows.
Such throughput has improved mainly from strong growth in EPO patents registered from Malta (16.2 per cent), Community trademarks (16.5 per cent), Community designs (23.5 per cent), and technology balance of payment flows (33.6 per cent).
Malta has now been ranked in the second tier of “moderate innovators”, which groups countries that have seen innovation performances below the EU average, as opposed to “well below” the EU average.
The scoreboard finds that the most innovative country in the EU is Sweden, followed by Finland, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Austria, Luxemburg and Belgium. At the bottom of the scale are, in reverse order, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Malta.
According to the findings of the European Innovation Scoreboard published yesterday, Malta’s relative innovation strengths lie in the areas of finance and support and in the overall economic effects of innovation on its businesses.
Finance and support deals with the availability of finance for innovation projects and the support of the government for innovation activities, while the economic effects segment measures the economic success of innovation in the areas of employment, exports and sales.
Malta’s weaknesses were identified as being in the availability of highly skilled and educated workers, linkages and entrepreneurship, and the number of firms that have introduced technological or non-technological innovations to the market or within organisations.
Linkages and entrepreneurship, an area that grew by some 22 per cent last year compared with the four per cent EU average, measures the country’s collective entrepreneurial efforts as well as collaboration efforts among businesses and between the private and the public sector.