Succeeding in Innovation: Key Insights on the Role of R&D and Technological Acquisition Drawn from Company Data

Andrea Conte and Marco Vivarelli ()

No 7671, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper discusses the relationship between a company's investment in innovation and its success in introducing new product and/or process innovations. In doing so, this analysis departs from the standard approach which puts forward a homogenous R&D-based knowledge production function by introducing different types of innovation investments (R&D and technology acquisition) for different sets of companies. Using the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) dataset comprising more than 3000 Italian manufacturing companies, the econometric analysis adopts a set of techniques which allows to control for the sample selection, endogeneity and simultaneity problems which arise when dealing with CIS data. The main findings are summarised as follows: (1) beyond the acknowledged effect of R&D in increasing the probability of success of product innovation, a larger-than-expected role is played by technology acquisition in the innovation process; (2) the relative importance of R&D and technology acquisition varies significantly across different types of companies where crucial dimensions of analysis are company size and the technological domain of a sector.

Keywords: community innovation survey; SUR; process innovation; product innovation; R&D; embodied technical change; sample selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm and nep-tid
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Empirical Economics, 2014, 47(4), 1317-1340

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