Factors and Dimensions of National Innovative Capacity

Factors and Dimensions of National Innovative Capacity

Maria Manuela Santos Natário, João Pedro Almeida Couto, Maria Teresa Borges Tiago, Ascensão Maria Martins Braga
Copyright: © 2010 |Pages: 13
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-643-8.ch007
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Abstract

A country’s national economic capacity depends on that country’s institutional efficiency, its national culture, and its Innovation framework. This chapter reflects upon the factors that influence national innovative capacity, based on the European Innovation Scoreboard database. By using clusters analysis to verify how different countries are positioned in terms of patent registration indicators, we determine which factors distinguish their innovative capacity. The results point to the existence of four groups of countries, and the factors identified point to aspects related to the institutional efficiency, the societies’ cultural values associated with the level of hierarchy or “power distance” and with aspects such as the level of population with tertiary education and the percentages of expenses with research and development applied by the companies.
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Literature Review

Innovative capacity has a decisive and crucial role in determining who is prospering in the global arena. Innovation is the base for the development of strategic advantages in companies, so necessary in the current context of global competitiveness (Porter, 1990). Thus innovative capacity enables countries to increase their productivity and attract investments, thereby sustaining continuous progress in the quality and standard of living.

(Suarez-Villa, 1990) introduced the concept of innovative capacity to measure a nation’s level of invention and innovative potential. According to this author, measuring the innovative capacity may provide important knowledge about the dynamics of economic activity. Such knowledge may be used by policy-makers or academics for understanding the changes in the Innovation, technology and competitiveness.

At the national level, innovative capacity may provide comparisons about the evolution of inventive activity and its relationship with the main factors of invention, such as access to education and protection of intellectual property.

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