Non-technological and Mixed Modes of Innovation in the United States. Evidence from the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey, 2008-2011

This paper presents a novel empirical study of innovation practices of U.S. companies and their relation to productivity levels using new business micro data from the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS) for the years 2008-2011. The paper follows the work of Frenz and Lambert, who use factor analysis to reduce a set of inputs and outputs of innovation activities into four latent unobserved innovation modes or practices for OECD countries using Community Innovation Surveys (CIS). Patterns obtained with BRDIS data are very similar to those found by those authors in some OECD countries. Companies are grouped according to their scores across the four factors to see that in large, small and medium companies more than one mode of innovation practices prevails. The next step in the analysis links different types of innovation practices to levels of productivity using regression analysis. The four innovation modes have a statistically signifcant positive relation with the level of productivity, other things constant. The paper demonstrates the possibility of taking into account the multidimensionality of innovation without the use of composite indicators.