Abstract
The present study provides a useful overview of the state of innovation and eco-innovation in the European Union. It does so by studying and understanding the performance, trends, descriptive spatial patterns and convergence of the main indicators adopted to this purpose, them being the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), also inclusive of the Regional Innovation Scoreboard (RIS) and the Eco-Innovation Index (EI). While the analysis involves all 27 EU members, it also provides a focus on four countries (Italy, Spain, Greece and Lithuania). These are illustrative project-driven case studies, as they have recently launched a common research effort aimed at promoting innovation-based resilience in the EU’s agrifood sector, named the SOSFood Project, facing the topic of innovation from a multidisciplinary and multiregional perspective. To better understand innovation trends, the paper presents an elaborate descriptive analysis and mapping of the most representative sub-indicators at a national and regional (NUTS-2) level, plus a convergence analysis through the adoption of the Phillips–Sul method. The analysis shows multifaceted results suggesting a differentiated catching up (where, by “catching up”, we refer to the achievement of more homogeneous innovation standards in many areas of the continent), resulting in a club convergence of EU members, where countries tend to be clustered based on regional location, although substantial differences arise depending on the specific indicator (innovation or eco-innovation) and sub-indicator subject to the analysis. Our work provides a clear visualisation of recent innovation and eco-innovation trends that can be of good use for analysts, researchers and policy makers interested in understanding where, how much and in what form innovation is most consolidated and opens an avenue to further research aimed at understanding where it is most needed.