Innovation, entrepreneurship and development

摘要

This paper tries to delve behind the often used word 'innovation' and attempts to understand the connection between innovation, entrepreneurship and growth. The macro index of measuring innovation of countries by the European Commission is presented. However, these indicators, have to be treated with some caution in the interpretation of 'innovativeness' of countries. The paper analyses one of the most important, and most quoted innovation statistic, that of investment in research and development (R&D). When the indicators of the 'productivity' of research are taken into account by creating a composite index for example, the rankings of countries are very different from that of the commission.