This paper provides some new theoretical speculations and empirical evidence on the relationship between design, innovation and economic performance at the firm level. We posit that design investments may provide firms with a higher capacity of introducing product/process innovations, but that...

Innovation is key to boosting Australia’s productivity and inclusiveness. This paper examines the policies that create good conditions for innovation, not only in science and technology but also wider forms, such as business-model innovation. Competition and flexible markets are particularly...

Productivity is the ultimate driver of sustainable increases in living standards. While Ireland is a high productivity country, it has not been immune from the global productivity slowdown, with the pace of growth on a downward trend throughout the 2000s. Little research has been carried out as...

Intellectual property protection mechanisms (IPPMs) are critical to fostering innovation and their relevance has grown enormously with the increased trade in goods and services involving intellectual property. Scholars have investigated what factors facilitate or hinder the use of such IP...

Raising productivity requires addressing a wide range of policies that affect resource allocation, the creation and diffusion of technology, human capital and the creation and financing of start-ups. The greatest gains can be achieved in the service sector and in SMEs, where productivity has...

Despite Greece’s long history as a trading nation, the country is failing to live up to its export potential. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) could significantly contribute to strengthening Greece’s export performance, thereby helping to jump-start economic growth and job creation...

The Korean government has made fostering a “creative economy” a top priority. The goal is to shift Korea's economic paradigm to one based on innovation in which new start-ups and venture businesses play a key role. However, the venture capital market is still at an early stage of...

Making SMEs and start-ups a driver of growth and job creation requires a number of policies to improve the performance of SMEs, whose labour productivity in the manufacturing sector has fallen to less than a third of that in large companies. The large-scale support for SMEs should shift from...

SMEs and entrepreneurs are of critical importance for reaching climate objectives. They have a significant environmental footprint on aggregate, but also make important contributions to reaching net zero through their innovations and greening efforts. This paper discusses the importance of...

This paper explores the role of green innovation in attracting venture capital (VC) financing. We use a unique dataset that matches information on VC transactions, companies' balance sheet variables and data on patented innovation at the firm level over the period 2008-2017. Taking advance of a...