How innovative is Norwegian industry? An international comparison

How does Norwegian innovation performance compare with other countries, especially with respect to small firms? This report explores this question, using data from the Community Innovation survey for 1992. We look at two broad issues. Firstly, we explore R&D performance, where we try to go beyond R&D expenditure, into a wider look at R&D collaboration, types of partner and so on. Secondly, we look at new product innovation, exploring patterns of sales from different categories of new products. The analysis looks across industries, and then across different firm-size categories. The report is not simply descriptive. It asks a very basic analytical question, as follows. In explaining differences in innovation performance (either participation in R&D, for example, or sales of new products) what are the respective effects of industry, nationality and firm size? To what extent, for example, are differences in innovation performance an effect of the industries which are being examined (and hence to what extent are differences in national performance an effect of the industrial structure?) To what extent are they an effect of firm size: that is, the distribution of activity across firm-size categories? And to what extent are they an effect of nationality, of the fact that we are looking at different nations, with different "national innovation systems"? We use analysis of variance techniques to look at these issues.