Abstract
Innovation research has developed a broad set of methodological approaches in recent decades. In this paper, we propose laboratory experiments as a fruitful methodological addition to the existing methods in innovation research. Therefore, we provide an overview of the existing methods, discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory experiments, and review experimental studies dealing with different fields of innovation policy, namely intellectual property rights, financial instruments, payment schemes, and R&D competition. These studies show that laboratory experiments can fruitfully complement the established methods in innovation research and provide novel empirical evidence by creating and analyzing counterfactual situations.
Highlights
Fostering research and innovativeness to support economic growth and increase competitiveness has become a central paradigm for policy makers worldwide in recent decades
We provide an overview of the existing methods, discuss the advantages and limitations of laboratory experiments, and review experimental studies dealing with different fields of innovation policy, namely intellectual property rights, financial instruments, payment schemes, and R&D competition
The European Commission has recently reaffirmed this goal by committing to spend up to 3 % of the European Union’s GDP to support private innovation activity until 2020. By means of this and other policy instruments, the EU aims to become an “innovation union” (COM(2014) 339). This paradigmatic focus has been adopted by the scientific community, which discusses the topics of innovation and industrial policy broadly, trying to obtain insights and provide advice to policy makers concerning the design of policy instruments that optimally foster innovation activity (Mazzucato et al 2015)
Summary
Fostering research and innovativeness to support economic growth and increase competitiveness has become a central paradigm for policy makers worldwide in recent decades. The European Commission has recently reaffirmed this goal by committing to spend up to 3 % of the European Union’s GDP to support private innovation activity until 2020 By means of this and other policy instruments, the EU aims to become an “innovation union” (COM(2014) 339). Brüggemann and Bizer Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2016) 5:24 regulatory instruments such as rules, norms, and standards have been introduced, such as patents and copyright law. These regulations are compulsory for all economic actors and shape the overall market conditions for innovative products and processes. There are “soft” instruments that include normative incentives such as moral appeals to economic actors and voluntary commitments like technical standards or public-private partnerships (Borrás and Edquist 2013; Vedung 1998)
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