Innovation Barriers, Indicators and Policies

This monograph discusses the coevolution of innovation barriers, indicators, and policies throughout the history of Innovation Studies. Our study starts with a thorough review of the theoretical and historical literature addressing the origins of these concepts to demonstrate that innovation barriers are intimately related to both the theoretical development of the innovation concept and its measurement as well as the policy-driven interest on innovation debates. The absence of a dominant epistemological paradigm in the field of Innovation Studies is arguably an important explanatory factor for the underuse of innovation indicators in policy decision-making which is in antithesis to the significant developments in the innovation measurement enterprise during the past few decades. We conclude that, although the context of changing paradigms benefits the creative freedom for research, it also hampers the stability and standardization necessary for the absorption of innovation indicators into the policy cycle. Efforts to change such a situation continue to this date.