Mapping the Innovation Activities in Europe

This chapter analyses the innovation activities and the way they contribute essentially to the regional dimension and growth. The chapter aims to investigate how technological infrastructure and innovation capabilities affect not only regional growth, but also the whole periphery and economy, as well as how technological innovation is essential if companies - and countries - are to maintain their competitiveness in global markets. Furthermore, this chapter describes the relative measures and indexes introduced by E.U. and O.E.C.D. during the last years, concerning Research and Development Expenditures, patents e.t.c., namely measuring innovation activities. However, there are a lot of underlying problems and questions regarding the measurement of innovation activities at a regional level. This chapter attempts to analyze the whole framework of innovation statistics and in particular to examine the measurement and also the statistical estimation of innovation activities in E.U.. Within this context, it is also aiming to emphasize and review the appropriate techniques, the most common methods and the particular related problems.