Young Leading Innovators and EU's R&D Intensity Gap - IPTS WORKING PAPER on CORPORATE R&D AND INNOVATION - No. 7/2010

The EU innovation environment remains to date weak in a number of key ¿input¿ indicators, especially private R&D investment, with relatively little signs of progress, despite the Barcelona targets, established since 2000. The EU-private R&D deficit compared to the US, primarily manifests itself in ICT goods and services. This correlates with a lower specialization of the EU economy in these R&D intensive, high growth sectors. This paper aims to address this ¿evidence gap¿. To this end, we decompose the latest JRC-EC-IPTS Industrial R&D Scoreboard (European Commission, 2008) of leading innovators in terms of R&D worldwide by age cohort. We compare the innovative profile of young versus old leading innovators and examine to which extent and why young leading innovators contribute to explaining EU¿s lagging leading innovation performance. The major implication from the analysis is that closing the EU-US private R&D gap it is mostly a structural issue. It will require the EU having more YLI, but especially having them in the right sectors, where they drive the High-R&D Intensity and growth performance. The policy agenda needed to address this structural challenge is daunting.JRC.DDG.J.3-Knowledge for Growt