U.S. Leads in Innovation, Says EU Information Society Chief

Viviane Reding, Head of the EU Information Society and Media Directorate, said in a speech on Tuesday that the U.S. and Japan lead the EU in innovation. The U.S., she said, leads mainly because of more patents, a bigger working population with higher education, and higher research and development funding.

Reding emphasized the importance of information technology, saying that "Information and Communication Technologies play a key role in this respect. They are central to modern economies -- to growth and jobs -- and therefore to the re-launched and re-focused Lisbon Strategy.

"ICT are enabling technologies," she said, "they underpin innovation in all sectors of the economy and are responsible for around half of the productivity growth in modern economies."

She went on to say that Europe is less successful in hardware -- with only two European companies among the world's top 10, and in software and computer services, the EU has only one top 10 company.

The EU's solution to the disparity is something called the i2010 Initiative, which seeks to increase European R&D to 3 percent of GDP in all 25 EU member states, and to create "a European Information Society that leads the world in terms of accessibility and participation by all."
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