The effect of a firm's size is analysed in relation with the probability of applying for a patent. We worked on the identification of a firm's minimum size, a threshold needed to formally protect an innovation by legal means. Below this minimum size the costs associated with protection are so...

Smart specialisation is an innovative policy concept which emphasizes the principle of prioritisation in a vertical logic (to favour some technologies, fields, population of firms) and defines a method to identify such desirable areas for innovation policy intervention. Its rationale involves...

In the design and implementation of policy, Paul Romer (2000) proposed a useful distinction between goals and programmes.Goals should be rather conservative (i.e. easy to accept). They should be objectives that are neither risky nor radical and for which there is a broad base of intellectual and...