EAGER: Collaborative Research: How Innovative are Innovations?: Refining survey-based measures of innovation

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

Conceptualizing and measuring innovation is surprisingly difficult. The international innovation community has been measuring innovation by developing national surveys based on the OECD?s Oslo manual that rely on the simple categorical distinction. This project goes beyond the categorical distinction by characterizing firms' top-selling innovations in a given market along the dimensions of economic, technical and uniqueness. These measures of innovation are validated by comparisons with other existing public and private data and by examining the firm, industry, and regional characteristics. Results from the project provide guidance for other innovation surveys to advance our understanding of the drivers of innovation. Approaching innovation as a multidimensional concept provides analysts the tools to calibrate the importance of a given innovation. The analysis allows researchers and policymakers to assess whether the innovations in question are important in a sense that will be meaningful for the various communities interested in innovation. This project exploits data from the American Competitiveness Survey, a private innovation survey, and combines it with data from the NSF Business R&D and Innovation Survey, the European Community Innovation Survey, and the Carnegie Mellon Survey, another private R&D survey.