Montenegro included in European Innovation Scoreboard for the first time

This year, Montenegro was included in the European Innovation Scoreboard for the first time. The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) provides a comparative analysis of innovation performance in the Member States of the European Union and other European countries. It assesses relative strengths and weaknesses of national innovation systems and helps countries identify areas they need to address.

This is a very important step in improving our statistical system and monitoring the implementation of the Smart Specialisation Strategy of Montenegro (2019-2024). The scoreboard data are collected through the national statistical systems, as well as through international bibliometric and intellectual property surveys. The dominant statistical surveys that provide data for the scoreboard are the Research and Development Survey (produced by the Ministry of Science), the Enterprise Innovative Activity Survey – EIS (produced by Monstat¹), with the participation of data from other statistics as well (higher education, exports, labour, etc.)

Among the four categories of innovators identified by the scoreboard: Innovation Leaders, Strong Innovators, Moderate Innovators and Modest Innovators, EIS defines our country as a Modest Innovator. However, Montenegro’s performance has increased over time compared to the EU in 2012. The strong growth between 2018 and 2019 is mainly due to improved performance in broadband penetration, most cited publications and private co-funding of public R&D expenditures (including higher education). Innovators, an innovation-friendly environment and employment impacts (i.e., employment in knowledge-intensive activities) are the strongest innovation dimensions. Our country is doing well in terms of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) innovating in-house, foreign doctorate students, enterprises providing ICT training, as well as innovative SMEs collaborating with others. Montenegro shows the largest positive difference when compared to the EU in net inward foreign direct investment, average annual GDP growth and the share of employment in services, while the largest negative difference is recorded in companies engaged in research and development, the share of employment in manufacturing and GDP per capita.

The 2020 edition of the innovation scoreboard was published on 23 June 2020 and highlights that the EU’s innovation performance continues to increase at a steady pace, with growing convergence between EU countries. On average, the innovation performance of the EU has increased by 8.9% since 2012.

Sweden continues to be the EU innovation leader, followed by Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands. This year Luxembourg (previously a strong innovator) joins the innovation leaders, while Portugal (previously a moderate innovator) joins the group of strong innovators. This year’s scoreboard is marked by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU. This has had a small impact on the EU’s average innovation performance, but the relative performance of EU countries in relation to EU’s global performance remains unaffected.

At the global level, the EU has surpassed the United States for the second time. The EU continues to have a performance lead over the United States, China, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, and India. Since 2012, the EU’s performance gap with South Korea, Australia and Japan has increased, while the EU’s performance lead over the United States, China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa has decreased.

The European innovation scoreboard interactive tool, which allows for custom comparisons of performance scores and country profiles and testing of correlations between indicators, is available here: https://interactivetool.eu/EIS/index.html 

The EIS profile of Montenegro is available here: link.

¹ Note: Monstat data are from a pilot survey, because EIS is a newly introduced survey in Monstat