Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

Fig. 1-27: Inter-company collaboration on ideas and innovations, 2019 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
DEU
NL
D
SW
E
FIN
GBR
LU
X
DN
K
IRL
AU
T
BE
L
PR
T
Ø E
U-2
8
FR
A
LT
U
SV
K
ES
T
CZ
E
SV
N
M
LT
BG
R
ITA
LV
A
ES
P
CY
P
RO
U
GRC
POL
HRV
HU
N
US
A
CH
E
CH
N
CA
N
ZAF
AU
S
BR
A
EU Member States
Reference countries
W
ei
gh
te
d a
vera
ge
Source: World Economic Forum (2020a). Graphic: iit.

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1. Current Trends
55
Fig. 1-28. This paints a very similar picture to the in-
dicator for inter-company collaboration: Austria’s 
score of 4.9 puts it ninth in the EU. However, all the 
EU countries are outdone by both the USA and Swit-
zerland. The ten best-performing countries in the EU 
are the same for both indicators covered in this sec-
tion – the only difference is the order in which they 
rank.
59
The findings presented here make it clear that 
Austria has a comparatively good level of collabora-
tion on research and development between different 
stakeholders, something reaffirmed by the European 
Innovation Scoreboard’s “Linkages” sub-index, as 
mentioned above. However, this sub-index looks at 
different dimensions. Austria’s performance in all 
59 The indicators used here are weighted more heavily towards executives’ perception of the extent to which various stakeholders 
collaborate, whereas the relationship capital indicators in the Austrian Research and Technology Report 2019 look at the number 
of actual collaborations. This leads to differences within the results: whilst the findings presented here place Austria in a good 
midfield position, it was considered one of the top performers in the 2019 report. One explanation for the country’s different 
rankings could be that executives only see modest potential for increasing the scope and intensity of collaboration even though 
there are already many such partnerships in place. 
60 See European Commission (2019b).
these dimensions is above average: the country 
boasts the fifth-highest percentage of SMEs to have 
R&D cooperation agreements with other companies 
and organisations based in the EU, the third-highest 
number of research articles co-authored by the pub-
lic and private sector relative to its population size, 
and the fifth-highest private-sector funding for pub-
lic-sector R&D expenditure. This gives it the highest 
score in the EU for in the “Linkages” sub-index.
60
 
1.2.4 Summary
This chapter used various indicators to examine 
Austria’s position in terms of its performance – i.e.