While I agree that there is lots of innovation and talent in the EU, I think there is also an "innovation gap" with other developed economies. Here's a take from the Economist [0] but you can find similar articles from the Financial Times, Blomberg, and other similar outlets.
It is a hit piece here for example they compare a whole group to a subset:
“western Europeans were a quarter poorer than Americans in 1990, and remain a quarter poorer today. ”
And when they say they do less research Id argue the research is done in universities for the benefit of mankind instead of something corporations do. Latest example is Stable Diffusion developed by the CompVis group at LMU Munich.
But if you ask the common man he will say it is something by OpenAI.
There are really no good institutions left, only good people.
[0] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/02/26/europe-is-the-fr...