This report presents the 2024 edition of the Innovation Output Indicator (IOI), a composite indicator published by the European Commission since 2013 to offer an output-focused metric of innovation performance at the country and EU levels. The IOI measures countries' capacity to derive economic benefits from innovation by tracking the extent to which innovative ideas reach the market, create knowledge-intensive jobs, and increase country technological capability. The IOI was developed in response to a 2011 European Council request to improve innovation progress tracking. It also serves as a flagship indicator for assessing the progress of the underlying objectives of the European R&I Framework Programmes and contributes to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) biennial assessment of innovation performance in the European Union, complementing the European Innovation Scoreboard. The report presents the latest results for the IOI composite metric and its underlying indicators for 46 countries, including European Union (EU) Member States (MSs) and selected EFTA, OECD and emerging economies. According to the IOI, Sweden, Ireland and Germany are the best performers in the EU and are followed by Finland and Luxembourg. Sweden outperforms the other EU countries in terms of IP applications, Ireland performs very well in terms of employment in knowledge intensive industries, while Germany performs the best across the EU in terms of its domestic value added content of its knowledge-intensive manufacturing exports. On the other hand, Romania, Latvia and Bulgaria reported the lowest performance among EU countries. The largest improvements in the IOI between 2013 and 2023 were recorded by Lithuania and Estonia, with the majority of EU MSs also showing an improvement in their IOI performance. The EU27 leads Canada, Australia, and China, but it continues to lag behind its main economic partners, namely the United States, South Korea and Japan. The EU27's performance has improved over time, albeit at the same or at a slower pace than its main economic partners. This suggests that the United States, South Korea, and Japan are maintaining or increasing their lead over the EU27, whereas China is rapidly narrowing the gap. This report also includes an extension of the IOI to the regional level for the EU27. The first, exploratory edition of the Regional Innovation Output Indicator (RIOI) utilizes both established and novel datasets to evaluate the performance of EU NUTS-2 regions in terms of innovation outputs. It provides a snapshot of regional activity, covering technological and non-technological innovation, as well as regional contributions to value added in trade, employment, and innovation activities. The results for the RIOI showcase the regional divide between the south-east and north-west - of the EU in terms of innovation output performance, with regions of Central and Western EU countries such as Germany, Sweden, Belgium, and Netherlands performing in general better that those of Eastern and Mediterranean EU countries. Exceptions in this pattern are capital and major city regions in the Eastern and Mediterranean Europe, which excel compared to the remaining regions of their country. These results are confirmed by a spatial autocorrelation analysis which showcases the clustering of high-performing regions in North-western Europe and low-performing regions in the South-east. The five best performing NUTS-2 regions in terms of the RIOI are Stockholm, Oberbayern, Berlin, Praha, and Ile-de-France, while Germany and Sweden showcase respectively eight and four regions in the top 20 performers.
