This paper examines the relationship between countries' international profile and their innovation performance using data for 32 European countries. The overall contribution of the paper lies in: (a) an in-depth exploration of empirical correlations between innovation and several indicators of...

A central factor which characterizes design-related innovative activities is that a major source of knowledge – that is designers – is very often located outside the firm. This raises a central management issue for the firm and unavoidably generates a tension between designer consultants and...

This article addresses the impact of the current economic downturn on innovation across Europe. Using micro and macro data we investigate to what extent some characteristics of a country affect the reaction of its firms in terms of innovation investment. It emerges that the effects of the...

One of the main characteristics of the technological capabilities of countries has always been their uneven distribution across the countries. This paper explores the dynamic of technological capabilities for a sample of 42 countries over the period 1995-2007 introducing some methodological...

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) have become ubiquitous in the current debate and have emerged as the key issue of global innovation policy. The ‘Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights’ (TRIPS) Agreement, signed in 1994 as a founding element of the World Trade Organisation,...

Composite synthetic indicators of the technological capabilities of nations have been used ever more frequently over the last few years, creating a sort of Olympic Games medal table of the innovation race. Such measurement tools have been formulated at the macroeconomic level by the European...

The 2008 economic crisis has severely reduced the short-term willingness of firms to invest in innovation. But this reduction has not occurred uniformly and a few firms even increased their investment in spite of the adverse macroeconomic environment. This paper, based on the latest three waves...