Summary
Despite very aggressive innovation policies, Canada is a laggard when it comes to innovation, resulting in significantly lower productivity growth -- and in the creation of an issue that has become a major national concern. This paper attempts to shed light on this dilemma by presenting a global survey of over 1000 large and small firms -- the MINE (Managing Innovation in the New Economy) survey -- which documented innovation strategies and performance in all sectors of an economy. The survey led to the identification of six patterns of innovation, which is referred to as "innovation games." Games of innovation are coherent sets of strategies and rules for making decisions about innovations in different contexts and apply a specific logic to a particular situation. Each game is also characterized by an ecosystem of interdependent firms and institutions that are complementary to the innovators. Understanding how innovation is structured is important for the design of any competitive innovation strategy.
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Extract
The Games That Innovators Play
This is a condensed version of an article written by the same authors. The full version can be found in the SSRN Electronic Library, under the name of either author.
As a recently released federal task force report emphasized, Canadian companies need to become more competitive. But "competitive" these days is practically synonymous with "innovative." The issue is a "But" because there is a dearth of knowledge, especially in Canada, on how companies around the world innovate. These authors researched companies around the world, and their findings, described in this article, will help Canadian companies jump start their efforts to become more innovative.Innovation is a major engine of economic growth. While competition forces businesses to innovate, managers have no easy recipes at hand. From a public policy perspective, the challenge is even more obscure. Despite very aggressive innovation policies, Canada is a laggard when it comes to innovation, resulting in significantly lower productivity growth- and in the creation of an issue that has become a major national concern.This paper attempts to shed light on this dilemma by presenting a global survey of over 1000 large and small firms-the MINE (Managing Innovation in the New Economy) survey-which documented innovation strategies and performance in all sectors of an economy. Th...See the full content of this document
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