Increasing the national innovative capacity: Identifying the pathways to success using a comparative method

Inward Foreign Direct Investment and National Innovative Capacity

“…The results of research performed by Crescenzi, Rodriguez-Pose and Storper (2007), Huang et al (2010), Franco, Leoncini, (2013), Proksch, Haberstroh, Pinkwart (2017) show that national innovative capacity is not exclusively determined by local effects, e.g. R&D resource for technology development but is also influenced by global network position and international cooperation.…”

“…Kasa, 2015) and qualitative comparative analysis, based on Boolean algebra and fuzzy-set theory (e.g. Proksch et al, 2017).…”

“…Control variables usually consist of GDP per capita, population growth rate, urbanization and employment share (e.g. Hu, Mathews, 2008, Lee, Pose, 2013Proksch et al, 2017). Patents: absolute number of patents; patent rate per million people; patent citation rate.…”

“…Authors' own elaboration based on Trajtenberg, 1990;Villa, 1990;Furman, et al, 2002;Gong, Keller, 2003;Hu, Mathews, 2005;2008;Huang et al, 2010;Sandu, Ciocanel, 2014;Boly et al, 2014;Kasa, 2015;Proksch et al, 2017;Lee, Rodriguez-Pose, 2013;Franco, Leoncini, 2013;Zeng, 2017;Wu et al, 2017;Zang et al, 2018;European Commission, 2018 a;Halkos, Skoloudis, 2018 Though innovation can "have various forms (product, market, process or social innovation), derived from diverse sources (closed vis-à-vis open innovation) and pertain to different scopes of change, i.e. disruptive, incremental or reapplied innovation" (Halkos, Skouloudis, 2018, p. 292), a lot of researchers use a popular approach to measure the output of innovative capacity by using patents or patent citations rate as a proxy (Trajtenberg, 1990;Furman et al, 2002), arguing that:  Patents are the only observable manifestation of inventive activity with a well-grounded claim for universality (Trajtenberg, 1990);  "Patents are intermediary results of the new product development process and are consequently indicative of the invention's activity and of research efforts" (Boly et al, 2014, p. 609); Nevertheless, despite the frequency of usage of patents and patent citation rate as the output of NIC, it gets a considerable amount of critique:  Not every patent is used to create an innovation (Proksch et al, 2017);  Modern technologies are not always distinctly proprietary in nature or granted with the patent right (Wu et al, 2017);  "The use of traditional tools creates an innovation gap, so that actual innovation is higher than measured innovation, and the more economies are service-based, the wider the innovation gap" (De Liso, Vergori, 2017).…”

“…Firstly, because of the fact that patents are effective to capture innovation in manufacturing but they cannot fully explain innovation in services (Hipp, Grupp, 2005). Secondly, not every innovation is patentable and not every patent is used to create an innovation (Proksch, Haberstroh, Pinkwart, 2017).…”