Europe may still be in the grips of a financial crisis, but that hasn't stopped a number of countries investing in innovation and research and development.

An annual study by the European Commission, titled the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) shows that in 2011, while some nations are lagging in their "innovation performance" (the state of R&D and innovation), 16 of the 34 European countries surveyed performed as well as or better than the EU average.

Monitoring 25 indicators, from human resources and investments, to entrepreneurship and intellectual assets, the index is meant to help monitor the implementation of the Europe 2020 Innovation Union flagship adopted in 2010.

Using the most recent statistics from Eurostat and other sources, the index calculates relative scores by country, which have then been made into composite scores after factoring in the nation's growth rate.

According to this methodology, the countries have been grouped into four categories: those performing better than the EU average are 'innovation leaders', those performing as well as the EU are 'innovation followers', those performing slightly below average are 'moderate innovators', and those much below the EU average are 'modest innovators'.