Austria - Research and Innovation performance
The country profiles aim to provide an operational tool for stakeholders and policy-makers to support the framing of research and innovation (R&I) policies and to facilitate the monitoring of performance, on the basis of a holistic economic and indicator‑based analysis.
The challenge of further enhancing the innovation base of a knowledge-intensive economy
Austria has expanded its research and innovation system over the last decade with investments in R&I growing more quickly than the EU average. These efforts have been translated into a high and growing level of excellence in science and technology and clear strengths in key technologies for energy, environment and transport. The level of investment in R&D increased from 2.61% in 2009 to 2.99% of GDP in 2014. R&D intensity is hence well above the EU average but still short of the ambitious national target of 3.76%.
Austria has shown good progress in the number of science and engineering graduates and in the number of business enterprise researchers in the labor force. These evolutions have had a positive impact on scientific production and excellence. Austria performs mostly above the EU, public-private cooperation in terms of public expenditure financed by business being one of the few exceptions.