How Innovative are Canadian Firms Compared to Some European Firms? A Comparative Look at Innovation Surveys

Pierre Mohnen and Pierre Therrien
Additional contact information
Pierre Therrien: MERIT

No 32, Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This paper investigates the comparability of the 1999 Canadian Survey of Innovation with the European Community Innovation Surveys for 1997/1998 (CIS2). Four European countries are compared to Canada: France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain. Differences in terms of design and implementation of the survey and formulation of the questionnaire are pointed out. Proposals are made to harmonize the two datatsets and make them comparable as much as possible. Different innovation indicators -- percentage of innovators, sale of innovative products – show different results across countries. Canada leads the pack by far if we consider the percentage of innovating firms in the respective country samples, however it ranks last if we consider the share in sales of innovative products. Canada, Germany and Ireland seem to be relatively similar regarding the percentage of first-innovators (a narrower definition of innovation). France and Spain lag behind in this regard but seem to have a high intensity of first-innovators among the innovators. Results also show some common trends for all countries studied. Firms in high-tech sectors are more frequently innovative and reach a greater share of revenue from innovation than firms in other sectors. Large firms are more often innovative but size is not always a good predictor for the percentage of revenue from innovation.

Keywords: economics of technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/rmpdf/2001/rm2001-032.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: How Innovative Are Canadian Firms Compared to Some European Firms? A Comparative Look at Innovation Surveys (2001)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:umamer:2001032

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Leonne Portz ().