What is Innovation Drivers

This study aims to determine the innovation performance of Turkey and EU countries in terms of human resources and employment indicators. Firstly, 28 EU countries' and Turkey's innovation efficiency is analyzed with Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) technique. An output-oriented DEA model was used with 4 inputs (government R&D % of GDP, at least upper secondary educational attainment, science and technology graduates, employment in knowledge-intensive service sectors) and 4 outputs (high-tech patent applications to the European Patent Office, high-tech exports as a share of total exports, UNDP Human Development Index and WIPO Innovation Index). DEA helps to determine where to look to improve DMU efficiency, but it is not possible to rank the efficient DMUs through DEA. Consequently, efficient countries and innovation indicators with respect to their impact on performances are ranked with Gray Relation Analysis (GRA). As a result of GRA, Sweden has been the first ranked country among efficient countries. Most important performance indicator has been found to be human development index.