Innovation and Innovation Policy in the Nordic Region

This paper reports on a desk-study on innovation performance and policies influencing it in four Nordic countries. The study is entirely based on published sources, either on the web (Eurostat, the OECD, the World Bank etc.), or in the form of articles, books, reports and evaluations. The first section introduces the study and deals with conceptual issues. Section two contains a descriptive analysis of innovation activities in the Nordic area and a broader set of countries with which the Nordic countries may be compared with the help of data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) and other relevant sources. Section three of the paper, then, presents - for four Nordic countries – an analysis of their innovation policies and how these have evolved towards their present stance. Lessons and questions for further research are discussed in the fourth and final section.