It is with great pleasure that I share my latest publication, a  JRC Policy Insights for the Joint Research Center of the European Commission (JRC), titled “How Innovative EU Firms Faced the Covid-19 downturn”. I had the pleasure to work with talented colleagues such as Alfredo De Massis, Pietro Moncada-Paternò-Castello, Anabela Marques Santos and Karel Haegeman. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered many challenges, but also opportunities, for businesses across Europe. In this work, we examine how the innovation and growth of firms in the EU have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, and how as “European Innovation Champions”, SMEs reacted to the resultant shock. 

We find that compared to non-innovative firms, the economic performance of innovative firms in the EU has been considerably less affected by the pandemic. We also identify five different paradoxical behaviours of ‘European Innovation Champions” during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Industrial policies targeting SMEs should be flexible and allow companies to adapt their investment plans in line with the evolving conditions to preserve and succeed through the crisis. EU instruments, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility and Horizon Europe, offer wide opportunities for firms to exit from the Covid-19 crisis and boost their future competitiveness.

The file is available for download here. 

How to cite this work: 

Di Minin, A., A. De Massis, P. Moncada-Paternò-Castello, A., Marques Santos and K. Haegeman (2021) “How innovative EU firms faced the COVID-19 downturn” Innovation for Green Deal BRIEFS SERIES – Industrial R&I – JRC Policy Insights. JRC 210713 November 2021. (link)