A Taxonomy of National Innovation Systems: Lessons From an Exercise Comprising a Large Sample of Both Developed, Emerging and Developing Economies

The aim of this paper is to put forward a taxonomy of national innovation systems(NISs). With that purpose in mind we will first implement a technique for mappinginnovation systems that was developed by Godinho et al. (2003). Such mapping allowsone to compare directly different NISs, by visualizing in bi-dimensional space thegraphic pattern of the relevant dimensions of each innovation system. Next thequantitative output of this NISs mapping will be used as the basis for performing acluster analysis in a second step. The resulting country groupings will be analysed foridentifying the major factors separating different NISs types. This will be the basis for adefinition of a possible NISs taxonomy. In the paper eight major dimensions along which innovation systems develop arehighlighted. These dimensions include market conditions; institutional conditions;intangible and tangible investments; basic and applied knowledge; externalcommunication; diffusion; and innovation. For materialising such eight NIS dimensions29 individual indicators were selected for a total of 69 countries. These countries rangefrom the most developed and largest economies in the world, through the emergingeconomies, to the less advanced developing countries. For each of the 8 relevant NISdimensions between 2 and 6 of these 29 indicators were allocated. The definition of theNIS dimensions and the selection of indicators tried to respect theoretical and logiccriteria of organization of the data. Overall the data basis that was developed and the methodological steps that were takenrepresent a unique attempt to cover such a large and diverse number of countries withthe aim of analysing their behaviour in terms of creating, consolidating and advancingtheir national innovation systems. As it will be shown, the resulting outcomes of thispaper have empirical, theoretical and normative potential. Following this introduction the paper is divided into five main sections. Section 2presents the conceptual context of the mapping and taxonomisation exercise that will becarried out. In section 3 the method followed is described, with information about theobserved NIS dimensions, about the variables aggregated into each of those dimensionsand about the economies that were selected as well. Next section 4 presents the resultsof the empirical analysis, by concentrating first on the mapping of the individual NISsand then on the structure that stems from a cluster analysis. The clusters that emergedare observed in section 5, providing an interpretation for the contrasting positions of thedifferent countries involved in this exercise. Finally, the concluding section attempts ata generalization based on the analyses of the previous sections, suggesting a possibletaxonomy of national innovation systems.