Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

46
Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
a country’s score for a particular sub-index, the bet-
ter its performance in this dimension. 
The rankings are calculated using both “hard” da-
ta and executive surveys, ensuring that a large num-
ber of countries are covered. To enable many coun-
tries to be compared with one another, the hard 
data is often restricted to fairly basic information 
that is gathered to the same extent in all the coun-
tries assessed. This means that unique features of 
individual countries can only be taken into consider-
ation to a very limited degree. Survey sizes also vary 
from country to country. The results of the rankings 
should therefore be interpreted with caution on ac-
count of these limitations.
Fig. 1-20 presents Austria’s position and the aver-
age of all 28 EU countries for all twelve dimensions. 
The results show that Austria is above the EU-28 av-
erage in all dimensions apart from the introduction 
and use of information and communication technolo-
gies. In terms of its capability to innovate, it infra-
47 See Hartmann et al. (2014).
structure capacity and institutional situation, Austria 
is ahead of the EU average by some margin. The find-
ings also indicate that more needs to be done – by 
both Austria and the rest of the EU – in the areas of 
product market efficiency (especially with regard to 
the complexity of customs regulations and a lack of 
competition caused by a handful of firms dominating 
the market), development of the labour market (with 
regard to integrating international specialists and la-
bour productivity, amongst other things), and the in-
troduction and use of ICT (with regard to the use of 
the mobile telephone and broadband network, 
amongst other things).
Innovation capability
The following analysis of Austria’s capability to inno-
vate is based on the Innovation Capability Indicator, 
which was developed by the German Institute for In-
novation and Technology (iit).
47
The iit Innovation Ca-
pability Indicator defines the capability for innova-