Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > Innovation Greece

EIS 2009 classified Greece in the group of moderate innovators – their system has few strong components and many weak ones. Greek innovators are rapidly improving in marketing or organisational innovations and resource efficiency.

Overall economic growth is positive (the corresponding EU average is shrinking), but economic effects are mixed: while the sales of new products and the export of knowledgeintensive products are well exceeding the EU averages, employment in high-tech manufacturing and knowledge-intensive services and exports of medium and high-tech products are lagging behind.

Effort on human resources is only a share of the EU average – the weakest point is “lifelong learning”, lagging far behind the EU average and demonstrating a negative trend. Financial inputs are much more diverse: broadband penetration is close to the EU average, and private credit is also converging; public RTD expenditure stagnates while venture capital is shrinking. This is worse in the area of “firm investment”.

All three indicators are weak and declining: RTD expenditure of firms, spending for IT and spending for non-RTD innovation. The group of indicators with the best picture is the “linkages and entrepreneurship”; Greece is performing at the same level as the EU average and improving six times faster.

Main innovation challenges

• Limited spending of firms on innovative activities based on scientific and technical progress and insufficient spending on non-RTD-based innovation.
• Lifelong learning remains the poor relative of education and training.
• Venture capital availability and accessibility.
• Low effectiveness and limited impact of the innovation measures on the economy and employment.

Conclusions

Strategy for 2007–13 has now been settled and resources allocated.

Continuous external evaluation of the effectiveness of the measures delivered proves necessary to enhance the quality of the schemes and all require serious upgrading of the quality of the services designing and managing the measures.

Most of the barriers to increase innovativeness are of the institutional and cultural order, and therefore need long-term action. Since the transition to the knowledge-driven economy is a common base of opinion leaders, they have to make clear that the most valuable good that may be produced and commercialised is new knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be acquired in the same way as commodity goods.

At an institutional level, reforms in the education system are urgent.