"Innovation Agency Lithuania consistently invests in the growth of innovative businesses. We fund projects, promote exports and have achieved innovation growth in Lithuania that is 10% ahead of the EU overall. We are now actively promoting cooperation between science and business and are planning to establish as many as three Centres of Excellence to create a safer, healthier and more climate-neutral Lithuania,” says Romualda Stragienė, Director of the Innovation Agency Lithuania.
This year, Lithuania moved up to the 18th position among EU Member States in the annual Innovation Scoreboard, outperforming Portugal. Between 2017 and 2024, Lithuania has made sustained progress, peaking in 2024 with an improvement of 16%-points over the period. Similar progress can be observed in countries such as Belgium and Italy (+15%).
The European Commission has identified a number of business-related indicators as the strengths of the Lithuanian innovation ecosystem. The venture capital investment indicator has risen by 17.3% since 2023, accounting for 137.6% of the EU average. Lithuania exceeds the EU average in terms of non-R&D innovation expenditure in the business sector (172.6%) and trademark applications (136.2% of the EU average).
Lithuania is also above the EU average in terms of the number of enterprises introducing business process innovations (105.7%) and the number of employees working in innovative enterprises (113.1% of the EU average). Lithuania remains one of the leaders in terms of the share of the population with tertiary education – 177.7% of the EU average.
Knowledge-intensive services exports and R&D expenditure in the business sector are identified as the main weaknesses of the country in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2024, with a suggestion to strengthen cooperation between business and science. From 2023 onwards, there has been a significant decrease in indicators such as enterprises introducing product innovations (-42%), innovative enterprises collaborating with others (-34.1%), and environment-related technologies (-16.3%).
For more information on the results of the scoreboard, please visit the European Commission’s official website.
