Ingra Paltser

Policy Suggestions for Integrated Public Innovation Policies in a Small Country

In recent decades, economists have been increasingly concerned with the role of the public sector in improving public policy for innovation processes; the link between transition of a small country and other factors have not yet been considered in detail. Therefore, we discuss (a) public innovation conditions prevailing in and policy measures available to a small country such as Estonia and (b) which might be effective there. The instruments to promote innovation of private Estonian firms, such as good conditions for entrepreneurs, taxation conditions, financial aid, and so on, are assigned to strategy (1); additional instruments, such as public demand, public procurement, and so on, are related to strategy (2), whereas sales of public property and participation in ownership to assist innovative firms are due to strategy (3). Private and public innovations concern the innovative activities of public enterprises according to strategy (4) and that of strategy (5), dealing with public research and the supply of infrastructure services. Public sector-oriented innovation refer to strategies (6) concerning education and (7) infrastructure, and strategy (8) referring to legislation and public management. The reform policies in strategy (9) are completely oriented to public sector innovation pointing to functional and territorial reforms, intergovernmental fiscal relations and similar policy measures.

Shaping a Holistic National Innovation System

For the sustainable economic development of a state the functioning national innovation system (NIS) is needed. NIS covers different government policies (for instance, education policy, R&D policy innovation support to business sector, intellectual property protection, public procurement policy, etc.). All these policies have to be integrated in a holistic system through innovation policy enabling the functioning different policies in mutual relationships smoothly and effectively for sustainable economic development. The goal of this article is to highlight the role of innovation policy in shaping a holistic NIS. The first part of the article deals with the need for public sector intervention in innovation processes and problems resulting from it. In the second part a holistic NIS model that reflects the role of innovation policy is developed and presented. The third part deals with the structure of innovation policy based on a holistic NIS model.

Public Sector Inputs to the Innovativeness of the Country

The globalization of competition has produced new issues for the public sector in the field of supporting a country’s innovativeness. This chapter’s objective is to analyze the structure and role of public sector inputs to the country’s innovativeness. In order to achieve the objective, the following research tasks have been set: analyze the literature on the structure and role of public sector inputs to innovativeness; provide methodology for empirical modeling of structure and impact of socio-economic factors on development processes; empirical analysis of the structure of public sector inputs to innovativeness and their impact on business sector innovation processes in EU member states, Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, and Norway. The data source used for the empirical analysis is the Eurostat database, and also some data originating from the European Innovation Scoreboard database. In the empirical part of the article a component analysis is conducted to find the structure of public sector inputs to innovativeness. Thereafter, in order to analyze the formation of business innovation development indicators, the influence of factors is assessed by multiple regression models explaining the public sector role in the formation of business sector innovation processes.

The influence of research and development policy: the case of Estonia in the EU

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the international position of Estonia among the member states of the EU and countries closely associated with the EU, from the perspective of the effect of research and development (R & D) policy on innovation activities in the business sector. Design/methodology/approach – Based on existing scientific research literature on the relationships between R & D policy and business sector R & D activities and innovation performance, a set of indicators describing R & D policy measures was created for the business sector. Using principal component analysis (PCA) method, independent robust dimensions of R & D policy were brought out. After eliminating the problem of multicollinearity in R & D policy indicators, robust multiple regression models were conducted to present a comprehensive empirical description of the shaping of business sector R & D and innovation activities in the sample of investigated countries. Findings – Based on the literature, the influences ...