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This study aims to design a national innovation capability appraisal model. This would indicate Iran’s competitiveness situation among regional countries and suggest factors influencing Iran’s performance promotion.

The methodology included four sections: bibliometric analysis to discover intellectual evolution of innovation capability and related concepts; construction of a multi-division structure of national innovation capability according to the clusters extracted from bibliometric results, and experts’ opinions; creating dynamic network data envelope analysis (DEA) according to designed structure, and analysis of Iran’s performance among regional countries; identification and prioritization of the factors extracted from experts’ opinions that improve Iran’s performance in created network using Fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method.

The contemporary bibliometric analysis by its extracted clusters proved the necessity of a multi-division for measuring national innovation capability performance that each division and indicators of each step were designed according to clusters concepts. In designed structure, dynamic network DEA results revealed the weakness of Iran’s performance in the third division in the transformation of patents and high-tech imports to high-tech and creative exports, which led to proposing improving factors by getting experts’ opinions to enhance Iran’s performance in this division by prioritizing them.

One of the limitations of this research was that the indicators used in three phases of national innovation capability in DEA were extracted only from the World Intellectual Property Organization database. Another limitation was the number of experts in focus group sessions because due to the difficulty of gathering them in one session, the researchers lost the participation of some of these recognized experts. Also, the research concentration was on the improvement of the third phase of national innovation capability, in which Iran’s performance was weak.

Creating a relationship between the divisions of dynamic network DEA, as a national innovation capability appraisal model, and the concepts of clusters extracted from reviewing the intellectual structure and evolution of innovation capability and related concepts.

Introduction: Today the ability of nations to develop and implement innovations is core for their international competitiveness. Ukraine is striving for innovation progress; however, its innovation performance is relatively low. The research problem is to find the bottlenecks, affecting Ukraine’s innovation capability.

Purpose: This study aims to research the national innovation capability profiles, based on cluster analysis, to develop an understanding of drivers and threats for the innovation capability of Ukraine.

Need of the study: The knowledge-based economy, which had already turned into one of the most efficient developmental models of the 21st century, became a key driver of international competitiveness for the leading developed countries due to their progressive structural shifts towards the growth of high-technology manufacturing and knowledge-intensive sectors. These trends are significant to capture for the sake of increasing the innovation capability of the economy of Ukraine.

Methodology: The study is based on the K-means clustering method, which is employed for identifying 10 country clusters based on the indicators of their R&D and innovation activities, which allowed us to assess the innovation capability of Ukraine in comparison with 140 countries of the world. Data selection and normalisation were based on the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report indicators.

Findings: The study showed that Ukraine’s innovation capability problems are typical for most developing countries and are prevalently connected to low R&D expenditures, patent applications, and international co-invention activities. Most countries, except for the technologically developed ones, follow the so-called ‘passive technological learning’ strategies, which usually result in low economic productivity.

Practical implications: Several innovation policy implications have been developed for the government of Ukraine based on the cluster analysis results and accounting for the problems of the national innovation system (NIS).

This paper aims to investigate the pattern of technological capability building in the gas turbine industry as a complex product system (CoPS) in an Iranian gas turbine producer named Oil Turbo Compressor Company (OTC) and to recognize multi-level (firm, industry and national) drivers influencing technological catching up in this company.

This paper used a qualitative approach and case study research strategy. A preliminary theoretical framework is proposed based on research background. Also, the data were collected from various sources, including the interview with 11 experts, studying many documents and participating in some relevant meetings and conventions. To analyze the data, the authors relied on their preliminary theoretical framework and applied the chronological sequence analysis technique.

Our findings show that, first, in contrast with mass-produced industries where capability building pattern often leads to product innovation, technological capabilities in OTC have evolved from assembling to manufacturing, upgrading and finally redesigning of existing models of gas turbines. Second, two firm-level (proper technology acquisition strategies and building organizational and managerial capabilities), two industry-level (networking, integration and collaboration among key actors and existence of local market and demand) and two national-level (government’s policies, supports and initiatives and institutional arrangement and political conditions) drivers have played indispensable roles in facilitating and accelerating technological catching up by OTC.

Inevitably, the current research faces a few limitations. For instance, the difficulty of generalization is considered an inherent problem because it is a case study of only one Iranian latecomer company, as well as only one CoPS industry. Regarding implications, the findings suggest that technological catching up in CoPS industries in developing countries is not a simple and autonomous process and is influenced by multi-level factors, including national-, industry- and firm-level drivers.

In terms of theory, this paper tends to investigate and explain the catching-up process in OTC as an Iranian gas turbine producer by applying a multi-level theoretical framework that consists of firm-, industry- and national-level drivers. In terms of practice, this paper aims at investigating drivers affecting the catching-up process in a CoPS industry in a developing country that was faced with vast international sanctions, while many other studies in this area examined cases from developing countries such as Korea and China that had the opportunity of enjoying international collaborations and overseas knowledge flows.

This paper aims to model the national development of the knowledge economy and argue its policy implications.

The methodology is a deductive research approach. First, the paper examines fundamental epistemological assumptions of the literature on the knowledge economy to identify major views on the knowledge economy. Second, it synthesizes relevant studies of the knowledge economy to develop key concepts to be used in the theoretical model of the knowledge economy.

The paper argues that among three views of the knowledge economy (i.e., knowledge‐as‐asset, knowledge‐as‐relation, and knowledge‐as‐capability views), the knowledge‐as‐capability view is the most appropriate to explain the knowledge economy. However, this view is still evolving to explain the knowledge economy. Only a few studies have discussed national capabilities, but they omitted many points of capability as an aspect of knowledge. Although many studies have discussed organizational capabilities and provided some insight, these ideas are not directly applicable at the national level.

This paper suggests that to develop a knowledge economy a national government should be concerned about the balanced development of the whole system of the economy, while paying due attention to knowledge‐related activities.

This paper proposes a theoretical model of the knowledge economy, using original concepts of three types of national basic capability, i.e., epistemic capability, economic capability, and institutional capability and national developmental capability as the meta‐capability of leveraging, orchestrating, and restructuring those basic capabilities.

Past decades have witnessed significant contributions to theories of the firm, innovation and economic growth from two closely related paradigms, namely, the Capabilities School and National Innovation Systems Approach. Unlike the neoclassical models of the firm and growth, these two paradigms place emphasis on the knowledge and learning process in understanding economic development. Despite being closer to reality in their treatment of economic issues than their neoclassical school counterpart, the two paradigms have not put human agency in the forefront of their analysis. This paper constructs a theory of national capabilities in the subjectivist perspective, which is then extended to understand firm and national capabilities and competitiveness. While this paper recognizes the influence of institutions on firms' decision making, unlike contemporary evolutionary literatures, the subjectivist perspective highlights the fact that all institutions are the coordinating effort of human actions which attempt to interpret external events or make sense out of social or economic interactions.

For the studies whose purposes are to evaluate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation activities of the enterprises, there are some limitations in the measures of industrial characteristics and using traditional statistical techniques. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries using grey system theory. The research results show that grey system theory is suitable to investigate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries.

This paper proposes the measures of industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities of high-tech enterprises. First, based on the data on Chinese large and medium-sized high-tech enterprises for the period of 2011-2013, this paper applies grey relational analysis to identify the relatively most important indexes on affecting innovation capabilities of Chinese high-tech enterprises. Second, based on the results from grey relational analysis, this study draws a ranking of the five Chinese high-tech industries in terms of innovation capabilities by grey decision making. Finally, based on the results from grey decision making, this study applies GM (0, N) model to investigate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries.

The results of this study show that in the evaluation indexes system of innovation capabilities of high-tech enterprises, personnel in R & D institutions, R & D personnel, internal expenditure on R & D, expenditure on new product development, expenditure on technology imports, expenditure on technology renovation, and expenditure on technology assimilation and absorption are relatively most important elements affecting innovation capabilities of Chinese high-tech enterprises. In addition, the two top ranking on innovation capabilities are manufacture of electronic equipment and communication equipment, and manufacture of medicines. At last, the findings indicate that in the measures of industrial characteristics, the three top ranking on affecting innovation capabilities of Chinese high-tech enterprises are R & D intensity, technology absorption intensity of indigenous high-tech enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises size. The opening level is in the middle position. Technology intensity, market concentration, and state-owned enterprises size are the three bottom ranking on affecting innovation capabilities of Chinese high-tech enterprises.

This study has some limitations. First, this study is limited to Chinese high-tech industries. The findings may not be applicable to other countries’ high-tech industries. Further studies with other countries’ high-tech industries could be extended and examined how industrial characteristics affect innovation capabilities of the firms in these industries. Second, the measures of industrial characteristics proposed in this study are somewhat theoretically weak. In the future, the authors will further improve the current analysis, and develop the measures of industrial characteristics. Finally, with the advent of the more data with the consistent statistical coverage released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics during the more continuous years, other methods, such as panel data regression model in econometrics could be used to evaluate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries. By then, the scholars can compare the results from grey system theory and those from panel data regression model in econometrics.

Appropriate industrial environment is favorable for Chinese high-tech enterprises to feed their innovation capabilities. Scientific evaluation on the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries is of great significance for Chinese high-tech enterprises in exerting technological catch-up and promoting their competitive advantage. The purposed measures of industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities of high-tech enterprises in this paper, and combined methodology based on grey system theory could be applied to evaluate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities of Chinese high-tech enterprises.

This paper proposes the measures of industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities of high-tech enterprises, and uses grey system theory to evaluate the relationship between industrial characteristics and innovation capabilities within Chinese high-tech industries.

In the data economy era, despite the tremendous effort of governments to actively provide and use open data, its effect on national performance such as competitiveness differs widely from country to country. A sufficient knowledge base and its appropriate management are important to effectively derive the potential value from open data. A country can implement multiple and equally viable means to effectively align open data with knowledge management, which lead to high national performance. However, previous studies lack consideration of the possibility of these various configurations. To fill the research gap, this study aims to investigate the configurational patterns constituted by government data openness and knowledge management for national competitiveness.

From the open innovation perspective, this study collected data from the global reports of 76 countries and examined them through fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

Four configurational patterns are identified, namely, coupled (outbound-focused)-, coupled (inbound-focused)-, inbound-focused-, and outbound-focused national competitiveness.

This study provides a foundation that enables researchers to build a holistic and balanced perspective that can manage open government data and develop knowledge management capability.

This study aims to explore the influence of a region’s network location characteristics and indirect connections on its innovation capability. The aim is to assist regions in different network locations to use innovation resources to improve their innovation capabilities more efficiently.

This paper represents the Chinese regional innovation network using the gravity model. A theoretical framework is developed to explore the relationships between a region’s innovation capability and its network location. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regressions.

First, this paper finds that a region’s network centrality can promote its innovation capability. Second, a structural hole can positively adjust the relationship between a region’s centrality and innovation capability. Third, a region’s indirect connections can inhibit its innovation capability while exhibiting a U-shaped relationship in moderating centrality and innovation capability.

This study uses a multi-index system to construct an innovation network covering 29 regions in China. This network represents the innovation cooperation and overall situation of innovation in China. The paper is one of the first attempts at investigating the relationship between regional network locations and innovation capability. It is also the first attempt at testing the influence of indirect connections on a region’s innovation capability. The findings provide a new perspective on the factors influencing regional innovation capacity and a new way for regions to improve their innovation capability.

The open innovation paradigm is an important topic of management thought in national innovation systems. Previous studies of open national innovation systems have almost always focused on concepts or theoretical exploration. There is a great lack of integrated frameworks for the process and mechanism of open national innovation systems. Therefore, the research adopts a structural approach and provides an open national innovation model to verify the influence of different mechanisms on open innovation outputs. As well, we argue that open national innovation systems will change over time, as the mechanisms are dynamic, linking, and coexistent. The study adopts a latent growth curve model to verify the growth tendency and progressive change. The policymaker’s perspective of exploring open national innovation systems is important. Building open national innovation capabilities is based on cumulativeness conditions, diffusion capabilities, and international linkages. The results show that cumulativeness conditions and international linkages will positively affect the growth rate of open innovation outputs. Consequently, this study adopts a dynamic experimental map to validate the relationship of the dimensions to provide government with some practical suggestions for making effective policy.

This study aims at offering a comprehensive thesis about the relationship between different cultural values and innovativeness.

Building on the human emancipation perspective and using data from Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s, and Inglehart’s cultural frameworks, the authors conduct a cross-national investigation into the effects of cultural values on national innovativeness.

The analyses show that emancipatory cultural dimensions such as rationality, secularity, self-expression, individualism, low uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, mastery and autonomy have significantly positive associations with national innovativeness. The opposing cultural values, such as traditionalism, religiosity, survival, collectivism, high uncertainty avoidance, short-term orientation, harmony and conservatism, have negative associations with national innovativeness.

This study contributes to the literature by putting forward a comprehensive and theory-driven explanation of the relationship between cultural values and innovativeness, by using all of Hofstede’s, Schwartz’s and Inglehart’s dimensions, by incorporating ethnic, linguistic and religious diversities and by applying alternative measures of the national innovativeness.