Evidence-based portfolios of innovation policy mixes

Russo, M., Pavone, P., 2021. Evidence-based portfolios of innovation policy mixes: A cross-country analysis. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 168, 120708. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120708 — free download

Highlights

  • Innovation policy mix is a multidimensional concept.•
  • An innovation policy mix is defined in terms of themes, target beneficiaries, instruments.•
  • The multidimensional analysis highlights an evidence-based typology of policy mixes.•
  • The typology is applied in a cross-country analysis to define innovation policy portfolios.•
  • The results are available for the online querying at https://poliinnovazione.unimore.it/policy-mix/.

ABSTRACT

In the past decade many papers have discussed innovation policies in terms of their design, assessment and impact. Drawing on those contributions, the ECsingle bondOECD STIP Compass suggests a detailed taxonomy of innovation policies with regard to their themes, target groups of beneficiaries and instruments. Implemented with a web platform, that taxonomy has promoted an extensive collection of information on innovation policy initiatives across OECD member countries. Using the STIP dataset, in this paper we employ that taxonomy to identify the innovation policy mixes by referring to all the dimensions encompassed in each policy initiative, i.e., themes, targets, instruments. The evidence-based multidimensional analyses yield a typology and set of topics of innovation policy mixes that we use to conduct a cross-country analysis of innovation policy portfolios. Although the results of the cross-country analysis are statistically significant, caution is necessary when using them because of three main fragilities of the current version of STIP Compass: the absence of information on innovation policies at subnational level; the classification of the largest group of target beneficiaries, i.e. innovation intermediaries; the quality of some information essential for enhancing the analysis. The proposed navigation of the STIP Compass data is freely accessible online.

Keywords

Innovation policy mix; OECD-EC STIP Compass; Multidimensional analysis; Textual analysis; Cross-country analysis; Innovation policy mix portfolios