Innovation performance of EU countries in context of R&D: R&D trap risk in Slovakia?

Expenditures in research and development (R&D) and their transformation in innovations are unanimously considered in the academic literature to be one of the key drivers of sustainable economic growth, total factor productivity, as well as the competitiveness of companies and national economies. The paper examines the dependence of the level of innovation performance of European countries on the countries’ expenditures on R&D. Although this dependence appears to be significant and long-term stable, there are significant differences in the evaluation of individual partial components of the innovation performance of countries according to the index used within the European Innovation Scoreboard. The mentioned findings indicate that the process of transformation of R&D into innovative performance is just as important as the amount of R&D expenditure itself. Using the example of the economy of the Slovak Republic, its comparison with EU countries and the Quintuple Helix model, the contribution further demonstrates how the low level of R&D spending in connection with insufficiently developed country subsystems (helices) can lead to economic paradoxes and, without systemic changes, to the unsustainable development path or to the risk of R&D spending trap.