Measuring regional innovativeness: a methodological discussion and an application to one German industry

Arbeitspapier

The regional or national innovation performance has been repeatedly measured in the literature; but it has so far not been discussed what this means, especially in relation to a region. What is the contribution of a region to innovation output? The usual approaches implicitly assume that higher innovation outputs per inhabitant, employee, or R&D employee can be assigned to a region. We argue that more insights are gained if we distinguish between various mechanisms that influence the innovation activities in a region. Different analyses need to be conducted, using different variables and including different local factors. Furthermore, we see no justification for using a linear dependence of innovation activity on the number of inhabitants or employees as a benchmark for performance. We use a method that takes into account these arguments and apply it to the Electrics & Electronics industry in Germany.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Jena Economic Research Papers ; No. 2007,065

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes ; General Regional Economics: Econometric and Input-Output Models; Other Models ; Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
• Subject: Regional innovation performance ; regional innovativeness ; non-parametric performance analysis ; measurement of regional innovativeness ; Innovation ; Region ; Messung ; Elektroindustrie ; Theorie ; Deutschland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Broekel, Tom ; Brenner, Thomas
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics
• (where): Jena
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/25632
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET