Performance and efficiency of national innovation systems : lessons from the wine industry

The multiplicity of factors involved in the innovation process makes its measurement and evaluation a complex endeavor. In this study we propose a new approach to measure and decompose the efficiency of national innovation systems in the wine industry considering the relationship between the innovation environ-ment and economic performance. The analysis applies the data envelopment analy-sis approach to quantify the relative efficiency of each national system using a set of four indicators to describe the innovative environment in the wine industry as model inputs, and an index of international market performance as output. The results dem-onstrate a clear perspective of the innovation process within the wine industry, iden-tifying the systems that efficiently use the available resources and those that encoun-ter difficulties in translating innovation into economic performance. The proposed approach also captures the dynamics of the international innovation landscape in the wine industry, providing potential country-level strategies and opportunities to increase innovation systems' efficiency.