A hidden source of innovation? : revisiting the impact of initial vocational training on technological innovation

While an increasing number of studies postulate that vocational education and training (VET) activities have a positive impact on the innovative capacity of training companies, empirical evidence on the subject remains contradictory. This study exploits establishment data from a representative survey of German companies to estimate the correlations between firms' participation in initial VET and their innovation outcomes. The results based on linear probability models show that the impact of VET activity on innovation is indeed ambiguous. Overall, as expected, participation in initial VET has virtually no effect on radical product innovation. However, a positive impact of training apprentices is observed in case of incremental product innovation and process innovation activities. According to our estimates, this finding primarily applies to the case of microenterprises with fewer than ten employees. We conclude from this that active participation in the VET system primarily promotes the innovation activities of very small firms by stimulating knowledge diffusion in regional innovation systems and developing absorptive capacities at the company level. As a result, small-sized training firms should be more likely to succeed in overcoming - at least in part - some of their disadvantages in innovation.