The European Union Research Commission has conducted its first benchmarking of national research and innovation activities. The goal of the report was to guide the whole of EU in becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, which is a strategic goal set at the Lisbon Summit in March 2000. In order to add international interest to the study, Japanese and American figures were included. Finland turned out to be the report's model country.

The EU Research Commission's benchmark report covers four key themes: public and private investment in R&D, human resources in R&D, scientific and technological productivity, the impact of R&D on economic competitiveness and employment. To cover these themes a set of 20 internationally comparable key indicators were drawn up. Finland got top rankings in all of these themes especially in the ones measuring R&D expenditure and the innovativeness of companies. (To view the indicators in more detail, see the report in http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/area/ benchmarking2001.pdf.

R&D expenditure of various actors (public systems, education, training systems, firms) was included to measure efforts devoted to the production and use of knowledge. The report notes that Finland is in a class of its own in having both a high intensity and a high real growth rate of R&D expenditure. Exceptional among EU member states was that Finland and Sweden also have a higher R&D intensity than Japan and USA. Swedish R&D growth rates were found out to be however more moderate than the Finnish ones.

While the growth rate of industry financed R&D is considerably higher in the USA than in the EU on average, Finland -- together with Denmark -- is an exception in that it experienced a much stronger growth in industry financed R&D than the USA. Furthermore, the report notes that Finnish industry is increasing its investment in R&D faster than any other country in the benchmarking.

Human resources in R&D are held to be one source for the production of new ideas and knowledge. Finland scores the highest in the number of researchers in relation to the total workforce with 10.62 researchers per 1 000 people working. Japan comes second with a figure of 9.26. Also, in related indicators -- such as number of new science and technology PhDs -- Finland comes second to Sweden only.

As to scientific and technological productivity, measured in the number patents granted, Finland ranked second to Sweden in the number of European patents and was sixth in U.S. patents. This indicates that produced knowledge may translate into potential economic gains. One should nevertheless take into account, that as some industries have a greater propensity to patent than others, the country's industrial structure is an important factor influencing the level of patenting.

Finland was at the very top of comparisons in indicators measuring the networking of companies with other companies, universities or public research institutes. Also, in Finland as in France, Sweden and Denmark, enterprises involved in innovation co-operation accounted for more than three-quarters of the sales due to innovation products.

To measure member states' economic competitiveness -- i.e., the capacity to produce with less work -- labor productivity indicator was included. It is somewhat surprising that despite the strong investment in R&D, Finland with other Nordic countries was found out to be below the EU average in labor productivity. Nevertheless, in the related share of value added of high- and medium high-tech industries, Germany was the only European country to score higher than both the US and Japan. Finland came third positioning itself third right after Germany and Japan, before the US.

Finnish rankings among EU member states, USA and Japan