The relationship between public support and the degree of novelty of innovation

ABSTRACT

The literature regarding innovation policy in developing countries indicates that public support can play an important role in fostering the accumulation of technological capabilities for both exploration and exploitation, thus facilitating knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship and innovation. This paper addresses this debate, analysing the role of public support in the degree of novelty of innovation. We add to the literature new empirical evidence concerning the relation between the degree of novelty innovation novelty and either research and development (R&D)-specific or general innovation-oriented public support in developing countries, such as Brazil. Our results show that both R&D-specific and general innovation-oriented public support are positively associated with innovation and shape the degree of innovation novelty. However, R&D-specific support is related to higher degrees of innovation than more general innovation-oriented public support.

KEYWORDS:

• knowledge and innovation
• degree of novelty of innovation
• public support
• innovation policy
• developing countries

JEL:

• Code: O31
• O38
• O32

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 PINTEC 2011 was used as it was the most recent research available at the beginning of this study. Notably, an update of the database or new analyses requires another research project to access the most current database.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo: [grant number 19/03911-0 and 20/08751-9]; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico.