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

Part of the progress may be attributed to the Community policies and the Structural Funds, which have favoured investment in new businesses and human resources development, in parallel to the traditional investments on energy and transportation infrastructures.

The EIS classified Greece until 2007 in the group of “catching-up countries”, together with other south and east European economies. In 2007 indicators there were even signs of slight retreat in innovativeness; but the revision of the SII in 2008 is enhancing the position of Greece (as of many other countries) and bringing her together with “moderate innovators”. Actually, the innovativeness of the Greek economy depends heavily on imported technology and know how and flourishes thanks to organisational and marketing innovations and very little on the production and exploitation of new knowledge. This business behaviour leads to high performance in “new to firm” and “new to the market” innovations, but very deficient in medium to high-technology manufacturing and exports. The form of the development characteristics is seen even in the throughputs, where progress is shown in design and trade-mark registrations, but not in EPO patent applications and TBP flows.

Main innovation challenges

• Limited innovative activities based on scientific and technical progress.
• Lifelong learning takes a back seat to education and training.
• Low effectiveness and limited impact of the innovation measures on economy and employment.

Action

Innovation is penetrating almost all economic debates on development and competitiveness. Structural programmes, thanks to the Lisbon guidelines and Commission’s monitoring, bring innovation to the first line of interest. The volume of public funding for RTD and innovation is expected to increase sharply in the period 2007–2013 and new schemes are expected to be introduced. Nevertheless, the lack of evaluation of the previous schemes is a handicap in designing new measures.

Limited understanding of the innovation phenomenon by the national and local actors, the dysfunction of the markets and of government bureaucracy, maintain pressure in favour of traditional priorities, such as material infrastructures in the allocation of funds. The public research community continues to operate in a closed academic environment, with some exceptions. The business community, in turn, is dominated by a large number of firms striving to survive through acquisition of embodied technology and organisational innovation.

In the coming years, the government will implement the operational programmes and the new legal framework that were prepared in 2006–2007. Without continuous evaluation of the performance and the impact of the measures, the updating and the enhancement of the running programmes will be difficult or made in a spontaneous way. The achievement of objectives responding to global challenges requires a renewed understanding of competitiveness.