State of the art insights in capturing, measuring and reporting firm-level innovation indicators
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Since Schumpeter's and Solow's work on the importance of technology and innovation for economic growth, the field of innovation research has made significant progress.Innovation has been studied in a macro-as well as a micro-economic setting, and in the context of different management and organizational structure theories.The ambition of the European Union to become the most innovative economy of the world, has -on a European level -set in motion a process of measurement, benchmarking and trend mapping, increasing the methodological needs for the valid and robust measurement of innovation activities, processes, and performances across borders.To this effect, Eurostat -the European Statistical Bureau -has designed its own harmonizing process for statistical methods concerning Science and Technology variables, based on the OECD's pioneering work.The measurement of various dimensions of innovation is considered by many countries to be of prime importance --e.g., one of the flagship publications of the EU is its European Innovation Scoreboard, previously Innovation Union Scoreboard (http://ec.europa.eu/growth/industry/innovation/facts-figures/scoreboards_en);OECD also publishes a Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard (http://www.oecd.org/sti/scoreboard.htm ).Both scoreboards include results obtained from surveys measuring innovation at the firm level.Those measurements are based on the Oslo Manual.The Oslo manual developed by OECD offers guidelines for surveys on technological innovation.The first edition of the Oslo Manual (OECD, 1992), published in 1992, focused on technological product and process innovation.The second edition of the Oslo Manual (OECD/Eurostat, 1997) was published in 1997 as a joint effort between Eurostat and OECD.It built on experiences gained since the first edition had been published, and among other things, included measurement of innovation in services.The third edition was published in 2005, again as a joint effort between Eurostat and OECD (OECD/Eurostat, 2005).It broadened the scope of innovation to also include non-technological innovations such as marketing and organisational innovation.Eurostat and OECD have started working on a fourth edition, as it was felt that after ten years the innovation landscape had sufficiently changed to warrant an update.Going from one edition to the next, most attention went to clarifying and expanding the innovation concepts captured in the surveys, e.g. the concepts of product, process, organisational, and marketing innovation (cf.Arundel, O'Brien & Torugsa, 2013;Hoskens & Andries, 2015).Over time, however, new questions were raised as to the comparability of results obtained using various survey formats.For example, a study done by OECD in 2012 using innovation survey [16-Sep-2016] 3/17 more systematic scientific experimentation with and validation of potential innovation survey design effects.Below, we describe more extensively the study that was done in Belgium comparing long and short forms for measuring innovation at the firm level.Example: do long and short innovation survey forms yield comparable results ?
Source: Lirias
Language: English
Topic: Firm Innovation and Growth
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2559426461