Creative Potential Of Research And Development - A Composite Index Of Potential Sientific Creativity

Both Lisbon Council in March 2000 and the one in Barcelona in 2002 represent major turning points in science and research activities at European level. At that time there was a formal recognition that science, technology and innovation, coupled with a quality education is the key to development and long-term competitiveness of European space. Moreover, the decade 2000-2010 was declared as a dedicated to the investment in these sectors, and 2009 was named Year of Creativity and Innovation at European level. In a study in the EU States and candidate countries, whose results were published in 2010, it was noted however that, despite the special attention given lately to these issues, index fund allocations for research and development budgets national level of 2007 is 0.67% on average in the EU (27 countries), compared with Japan (0.68%), South Korea (0.80%) and especially the United States (1.03 %). The purpose of this paper is to identify those factors that influence a nation\'s potential of scientific creativity and to find a way to compare different countries in terms of such potential. If until now many attempts were made to create an index of national or regional creativity, our goal is to narrow the field of creativity to scientific research and to compare the performance / potential of Romania compared to other European Union countries. Among the basic elements which have a direct impact on the potential for innovative scientific development, one can identify investment, human resources and current performance. Based on the above factors, a composite index of scientific creativity potential was developed, which takes into account the three main elements described above: human capital (human resources in science and technology and researchers), financial capital (investment in research and development) and scientific performance (Hirsch Index). Data for the first two were extracted from the Eurostat database for comparisons to be made between countries, while the third one has been estimated by specialized research teams based on data available on Essential Science Indicators (ESI) of Web of Knowledge. The main limit is the level of accuracy in data provided by each nation, and the extent to which such data were estimated, not final. The main benefit is that of identifying the position one country compared to others, but also to find the main factors that placed that country at one level or another in the overall classifications, thus allowing for the development of action plans particularly focused on those elements.