Dynamics of innovation patterns: some insights for Portugal

Abstract

Innovation has increased its importance in the past few years in several areas, calling the attention of many sectors of our society due the key role that innovation has in firm's life, namely in determining its competitiveness and sustainability (Freire, 2006). Consequently, innovation is also crucial to the economic growth of a country (Bilbao-Osorio and Rodríguez-Pose, 2004). The aim of this work is to identify and characterize Portuguese firms innovation patterns using CIS3 (1998-2000) and CIS4 (2002-2004) data for both manufacturing and service sectors and to compare the results between them. Through a Cluster Analysis we identify and define three clusters in each sector for each period of time. The results show that there are differences between sectors and that some changes occurred through time, namely those related to innovation objectives and sources of information. We conclude that innovative pattern of firms in service sector in period 2002-2004 is significantly different from the innovative pattern of manufacturing and service sector firms in 1998-2000. Comparing our results for CIS3 and service sector with those obtained for Spain and published by Camacho and Rodriguez (2008), we conclude that there are differences in the strategies of the innovation activities and in the distribution of innovation expenditures between the two countries and similarities in what concern with the main innovation objectives and sources of information. The two countries also differ in the way firms of different industries innovate; in service sector, in 1998-2000, while Spanish firm’s innovative behaviour was heterogeneous within industries, in Portugal the firm’s behaviour was homogeneous.