Innovation Barriers, Indicators and Policies: Coevolving Concepts in the History of Innovation Studies

Innovation Barriers, Indicators and Policies explores the historical coevolution of these three core concepts in the field: barriers, indicators, and policies. The authors show how these concepts have coevolved and reinforced each other throughout the history of Innovation Studies. This detailed historical review on the general conception of innovation is warranted in order to support a clear understanding of innovation barriers, indicators, and related policies as they have been shaped and co-evolved through time. Based on the thorough review of innovation barriers undertaken herein, we see that financial and non-financial obstacles do not affect the innovation output directly. Instead they impede the effect of the innovation determinants, whether these determinants are firm-specific, network-specific, or referring to the contextual environment. Section 2 presents a thorough discussion on the historical evolution of the innovation concept and its connection to the concepts of barriers, indicators, and policies. Section 3 discusses the beginnings of the measurement of innovation barriers, as well as the linkage between the study of obstacles to innovation and a policy-driven approach towards scientific and technological progress. Finally, Section 4 concludes with the main findings and avenues for future study.