On Measuring Countries’ Innovation Performance: Organisational Level Perspective

Abstract

Innovation performance of countries is an important input for the governmental policy‑making. However, currently popular rankings such as Eurostat’s Summary Innovation Index instil one‑approach‑fits‑all perspective by clearly specifying success conditions without considering contingency factors that make each country’s situation unique. Our aim is to contrast current approach for innovation performance measurement on both country and organisational levels. We believe that the organisational level perspective can offer an inspiration for a change in the country level indicators themselves. Our study raises several concerns about the current state of the country level innovation measurement, notably exclusion of a higher number of innovation process indicators and omission of specific internal and external factors of measured countries. We propose that indicators accounting for these areas would offer more a realistic and useful picture of innovation performance.

Keywords

• innovation performance
• measurement
• organisation
• country
• innovation index
• contingency approach