Efficiency of Innovation Systems in Europe: An Institutional Approach to the Diversity of National Profiles

Abstract

Globalization did not create convergence to a unique economic model among countries. Even in developed countries, the answers to the pressures of markets underline the existence of a variety of capitalisms. The analysis of innovation systems, in particular at the national level, is adequate as a preliminary approach to understand the diversity of profiles and institutional architectures. The article benefits from the broader notion of national innovation system to understand the profiles of 15 European countries. By analysing central building blocks and institutional complementarities through the creation of indexes based on 64 variables and a cluster analysis, it was possible to understand the different levels of institutional efficiency in the analysed dimensions for the selected groups of countries.

Acknowledgements

Hugo Pinto gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT grant ref. SFRH/BD/35887/2007).

Notes

The credit of the concept is usually given to studies of Freeman, Nelson and Lundvall. Freeman (1995) attributed the expression to Lundvall in his 1992 book but this author attributed it to Freeman by resurrecting a not published paper (Freeman, 1982). Despite these controversies the NIS were being actively discussed in policy-making organizations, such as the OECD, at least 30 years before the topic emerged as a mainstream approach in scientific research (Godin, 2009).

A measure of statistical internal consistency was used, the Cronbach's alpha, evidencing high reliability in the building block indexes.

Using the software SPSS, version 16.0.