Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol1-1 > Belgium

According to the European Innovation Scoreboard 2007, the innovation performance of Belgium places it in the group of “innovation followers” since 2003 with an innovation performance just above the EU average, but below the “innovation leader” countries. Its innovation performance is characterised by relatively high investment by the business sector offsetting an under-investment by the public sector. However, this investment is precarious due to the dominance of a few large and foreign firms in the total expenditure.

Belgium has a relatively well-educated population, but is losing ground in the area of new science and technology graduates; a situation worsened by the uncompetitive net wages paid to researchers and engineers. Even where Belgium performs well in knowledge production this is not turned into a reinforced technological specialisation (as measured by patents, etc); and indeed there appears to be a significant problem in turning the considerable investment in research into commercially viable innovations. Finally, the low propensity to become an entrepreneur in Belgium, and particularly to develop knowledge-intensive firms, is a continuing cause for concern.

Main innovation challenges

• Innovation skills mismatch.
• Creating and growing knowledge-intensive enterprises.
• Improving the rate of patenting and intellectual property management know-how in general in Belgian enterprises.

Action

Over the years, the innovation systems in Belgium’s regions have become more and more complete, paying attention to the various aspects needed to boost the competitive position of the regions in a scientific, technological and economic sense. However, this completeness is on the verge of becoming too complex and therefore ineffective (eg SME support measures in Flanders are being simplified, as recommended by an expert study). This should be addressed, but this does not mean a complete restructuring of the whole innovation system – there are a large number of elements of the system that are working well.

The regional scale is, in some areas, too small to compete in a globalised economy. Therefore co-operation between the regions should be increased or at least not be hindered. From the perspective of innovation policy, there are also other more urgent framework conditions than the flaws in the system itself, such as fiscal burdens on labour, an inflexible education and training system, and so on.

The recent report of the Central Council for the Economy on patenting offered a number of interesting proposals in this field, which could be usefully pursued by both Federal and regional authorities. For instance, the report proposes to follow the French model of proposing a free (or at marginal cost) IPR audit for SMEs, a measure that has worked well in France.