Please see the following article

Article Defining and measuring innovation in all sectors of the economy

Best Regards Namiq Abbasov

Dear Namiq Abbasov,

Measurement of value, level of innovation is not an easy and simple process. This is due to the ambiguity of defining the concept of innovation in the context of various areas of business, economy, human activities, etc. In many countries systems for measuring the level of innovation are created in state institutions that finance the development of innovative projects, investments in innovative economic enterprises, development of innovative enterprises, startups developing innovative products and implementing innovative technological solutions created in research laboratories. The goal is to raise the level of innovation in the domestic economy. In the institution established to allocate public funds to provide external financing for innovative startups, systems for measuring the level of innovation are built and improved. In addition, also commercially operating financial institutions, including banks, investment funds, etc. that provide loans, loans or share financing, eg purchase of a significant share of shares issued by an innovative startup to finance the development of innovative technology, an innovative product or service, etc., are also developed for analytical need and constantly improve systems for measuring the level of innovation.

Best wishes

Quality of innovation infrastructure, money spent on R&D, quality of outputs (patents, trademarks, products etc.,) as well as commercialisation of those outputs. I would also add, the level of adaptation/change at macro, meso or micro levels. See pillars 11 and 12 of the World Economic Forum (WEF) for additional insights. Alternatively, read the World Competitiveness Report for insights on the specific variables that they (WEF) measure.

http://reports.weforum.org/global-competitiveness-report-2018/chapter-3-benchmarking-competitiveness-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-introducing-the-global-competitiveness-index-4-0/

You could also look at OECD publications. They (OECD) have a specific guide on "collecting and using data on innovation."

https://www.oecd.org/science/oslo-manual-2018-9789264304604-en.htm

Sum up the number of EU, US and JP patent applications filed by individuals or companies from the country in question. It should take a few minutes on Espacenet. DON'T look at the number of national patent applications filed by citizens/companies in their own countries - for many countries, the local market is not large enough to justify the expense of local patenting and it may be risky to use local attorneys to draft applications for important inventions.

There has been a very interesting project on the topic, but unfortunately it stopped in 2015 (IN-EUR)

You can find information and links on http://www.interreg4c.eu/projects/project-details/index-project=124-measuring-innovation-among-european-subregions&.html

Hope this help

Dear Daniel Richard,

Thank You for the link, do you have any idea why did they stop it?

Many interesting remarks are already mentioned here, but it depends of how defining 'innovation'. Allow me to cite 'Schumpeter', who approached innovation in many different ways and which is still an actual approach: innovation as technical products or methods, ways to approach new markets and new business strategies. You all have to include it when measuring innovation. Counting patents is indeed one way for measuring technical innovations. You can e.g. calculating the number of citations of patents which is an indicator to discover important basic technologies. On the other hand, many other parameters like GDP, education level, number of scientific publications,..etc. can be used to calculate an integrated score. One interesting report that is frequently updated is the Global Innovation index (worldwide): https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-2019-report. Other publications can be found at http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/inno-stats.htm or https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/science-technology-innovation/data/database

Counting patents, properly done, is a good 'rough and ready' approximation. Done badly, it is meaningless.Go elsewhere and you will drown in a morass of uncertainty. Let me suggest - innovation equals new products on the national market. (not true but a starting point for this example). So, the task is to count new products on a national market. This ONLY works if new products have to receive some form of national regulatory approval. So, just maybe, it works for drugs and agrochemicals. So, you can disappear into the vague cloud, or you can chose a less than perfect but existing and quantifiable database. It is your choice.

It may just be that national innovation correlates with national economic factors (e.g. balance of payments, stock market change, or retail price index). However, the number of other factors also involved seems likely to put nailing down the correlation way beyond AI-unassisted skill.

Dear Namiq Abbasov,

The project was funded by EU for 3 years (as far as I remember), so it stopped at the end of the 3 years.

I had the opportunity to work on it as an expert for a mission, short but very interesting, since I had the chance to compare the model (formal) which was under construction in the project to an existing model (much more empiric) developped in France, which was giving good results on the question of supporting/fostering innovation in the enterprises fabric at a regional level.

Kind regards

Daniel

I have been working with Innovation and Innovation Index for many years. Besides what you'll find in these international indices I believe setting innovative entrepreneurial projects in all government institutions would make the major difference. Focus first in issues related to youth.

For measuring the level of innovation in a country you can look at different things:

a. Amount companies implementing the innovation and the use of the use of the product and the services offered.

b. Number of start-ups, number of employment and the amount of investments in the innovation

c. Growth of the economy in the branche were the new technology has been implemented.

d. Partnership with universities and research institution in developing new products bades of new knowledge

e. The number of patents registered; look also at the others sectors of the creative economy: books, films, art, fashion. Is the country a leader in the development and production?

f. Measuring the effects of the innovation: What is the effect on different part of the society?. Intended and unintended effects 9quantitative and qualitative).

Most of the time one innovation can't be credited all the success achieved, but you can measure certain things.

Please see the following article

Article Defining and measuring innovation in all sectors of the economy

Best Regards Namiq Abbasov

The number of patents awarded to a country is one way to assess** the " level of innovation". But, I am not entirely convinced . I would rather use "level of inventiveness"... it is a long way from invention to an innovation that makes a difference. I used to work for a number of companies, and one of the companies was for many years the country's top company for filing patents. But the number of innovations while substantial, did not all result in revenue-earning product or process innovations.

Another company that I worked was also very inventive, but it does not exist today... it was acquired in an M&A exercise by a competitor --- please see the book DEC is Dead, Long Live DEC. The acquirer which also had a fair amount of patents was acquired by yet another company. This high-tech acquiring company is today not as large as its former self.

The point I am making is that all measures while interesting do not or cannot give a full picture -- more aspects need to be considered as the previous respondents like Cockbain, Darson, Deconinck, Richard have alluded to. That said, many of the countries topping the global innovation index are quite innovative

** "measure" suggests a degree of accuracy or precision and I am not sure we can really talk of innovation in those terms. Perhaps some may disagree?

Dear Mr. Barbonis, I fully agree with your comments. The subject 'innovation' is so broad and a disclaimer would be on his place when defining measures in relation to its aim. Patent statistics are easy to count but you don't know what you are measuring. ROI to calculate patent value would be more reliable but very difficult. Societies invest and support innovations and very often require a patent assurance. This is also the case with VCs. Seed capital needs a kind of fall back issue. Therefore I think that patent counts require more deeply analysis but consequently also intensive research to make conclusies about patents and innovation.

The best. Nico

Namiq Abbasov

Further to response earlier, I found the attached document in my old archives titled "Innovation Metrics." It should shed some light on the different innovation metrics and how they have evolved over time.

I dont thonk yhat counting patents is good methodology. I discussed with dome colleagues who register patents. And what? Nothing hapen. There is patent but the product not demanded.