Assessing national innovation performance

Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to understand how to manage the national innovation system with an emphasis on international connectedness. National innovation system, which is the major stream of research in innovation studies has long garnered academic and practical attention, has been confined to the perspective within a single country. To complement this limitation, I apply an extended approach to the existing national innovation systems, thereby constituting a transnational innovation system. Based on this perspective, the first essay is to assess the efficiency of innovation systems, and identify the potential origin of efficiency and inefficiency so that future policy direction can be provided. The second essay pays particular attention to the role of knowledge spillover network across countries, and its relation to country’s innovation performance is examined. Thus, this dissertation sheds light on the need to understand the national innovation system at the global level, and argues that more attention to the structure of this transnational system may be necessary for the efficient and effective management of innovation policy. The findings may thus serve as a reference to the development of national innovation systems and also provide implications for developing appropriate policies for this purpose.