Background: A Classification and Typology of Innovative and Inventive Activity

Why is measuring innovation considered to be important?

Currently, innovation seems to be everywhere. Innovation is perceived as a driver for societal change, for productivity and industrial change. Enterprises, governments, and civil society organizations aim at promoting innovation at different levels. What is more, different actors at the national and transnational level aim at ordering, classifying and monitoring innovation in order to set up strategic programs for research and technology.

Since the 1960s, governments, as transnational organizations and scholars demand more and consistent information about how science and industry finance, organize and (aim to) improve innovation capabilities. Towards the end of the 1960s innovation indicators became part of the strategic planning of research and technology policy (Freeman, 1969).

It was the aim to provide a long term monitoring of the structures and performance of science systems. Interest in innovation accelerated with the visible erosion of large mass production business models (Little, 1963; Piore & Sabel, 1989). As a consequence, policy makers, transnational organizations and enterprises aimed to more systematically understand the circumstances and conditions in which innovation occurs (Freeman, 1974).