Is Globalisation sufficient for Innovation? A National Systems of Innovation approach in distinct levels of Competitiveness

Abstract

This study analyses the inclusion of globalisation as an innovation enabler in a national systems of innovation (NSI) framework and perceives differences between more and less competitive countries. Based on the NSI approach, we argue that globalisation should be considered in NSI frameworks. Moreover, besides revealing innovation configurations leading to higher innovation outputs, this study establishes a link between innovation configurations and country competitiveness. Analyses were performed through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) with a sample of 127 countries. Our results indicate that the addition of globalisation does increase the strength of the relationship between the solutions obtained and innovation outputs. When comparing two different innovation outputs, paths leading to higher creative outputs were in greater numbers than those leading to higher knowledge and technology outputs, particularly when considering competitiveness levels. High competitiveness countries showed more paths leading to higher innovation outputs. This study contributes to the literature on NSI by considering globalisation as an antecedent condition for higher innovation outputs. Furthermore, the diversity of paths taken by more and less competitive countries highlights the need for the latter to diversify their national systems of innovation in order to catch-up.