National Innovation Systems and Corporate Intangible Investment as a Driver of Sustainable Development: A Cross‐Country Study

There is a major interest in analyzing the role of intangible assets on sustainable development, which is a topic under the auspices of the so-called 5th stage of research. Cooperatives are enterprises directly committed to sustainable development due to their dual nature–economic and social. This paper is based on a literature review and proposes a theoretical model based on intangible assets for understanding the role of cooperatives as drivers of sustainable development. The findings show that these assets are involved in regional competitiveness and especially evident when considering cooperatives. It can be concluded that, when focusing the attention on cooperatives, it is useful to use a multilevel approach (micro and macro levels) to understand the whole process of interaction between intangible assets and sustainable development. The model aims to contribute to a line of research of great potential, but is also a practical tool for reflecting on cooperativism and for government agencies.

This chapter provides an updated discussion of China’s national and regional innovation systems. First, it introduces the unique development path and distinct characteristics of China’s national and regional innovation systems. Second, it reviews the evolution of China’s national and regional innovation systems, which is divided into five periods: the pre-reform era (1949–1978), the end of the chaos and the beginning of a new era (1978–1985), the reform of China’s science and technology (S&T) system (1985–1998), the scaling-up of S&T system reform (1998–2006), and the improvement of the national S&T system (2006–2013). Third, it describes the overall structure of China’s national innovation system, illustrating the components and interactions (e.g., university-industry linkages, military and civilian integration) within the system. Then, it evaluates the overall performance of China’s national and regional innovation systems. Lastly, it points out future directions for deepening the reform of China’s national innovation system and continuing to pursue innovation-driven development.

As a critical part of national scientific and technology system reform, construction of national innovation system is a fundamental measure of innovation driven development strategy. Medical science and technology innovation system (MSTIS) is an important component of national innovation system (NIS). It is essential to elaborate the content, characteristics and process of the MSTIS. Based on the development status of Chinese economy and society and the framework of NIS, we evaluated the characteristics of medical science and technology development, and ultimately concluded and elaborated the content and characteristics of MSTIS from the following aspects: innovation force, innovation subjects, innovation activities, and innovation environments. We also prospected the future process of MSTIS, i. e., promotion of innovation force, ability construction of innovation subjects, scientific plan of innovation activities, and improvement of innovation environment. Key words: National innovation system; Medical science and technology innovation system; Content; Characteristics; Prospect

This article describes the essence of intangible assets in the system of concepts that determine the features of international investment activity. It is established, that without attracting of foreign investment becomes impossible to increase the level of competitiveness of domestic products in the world market. The purpose of the article is to identify the nature, dynamics and specifics of innovative investment in the development of international economic relations. It is stated that in modern conditions of economic development, intangible assets start to acquire increasingly important role in the process of capitalizing the value of enterprises and will play a major role in the formation of companies soon. It was concluded, that given trends in information development, intangible assets are becoming more valuable for an enterprise in terms of generating additional value and capitalization growth of an enterprise. Now the state policy of innovation development is characterized by inconsistency, lack of clear concept of national innovation priorities and system approach to the development of innovation activity (national innovation system), however economic and legal relations are able to acquire maximum effectiveness in the case of investing economic activity through the transfer of innovative production.

This article examines the transformation of China’s national and regional innovation systems. We review an emerging literature on innovation research on China, especially geographical studies of innovation, and argue that China’s national innovation system has become more enterprise‐centered since the economic reform started in 1979. This article systematically evaluates the strength and weakness of China’s national innovation system and argues that the new innovation system has a significant regional dimension demonstrated through attempts to establish regional innovation systems. R&Ds are concentrated in high‐tech development zones in China. However, these zones are more manufacturing oriented. In other words, there is more development than research. These regional systems, however, play a role in promoting economic competitiveness in their respective regions.

The role of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows is tested on three main pillars of sustainable development (SD), which consists of economic growth, income distribution and environmental quality for Singapore. The analysis is performed by using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation technique. The sample data is based on annual data, covering the period from 1970 to 2013. The estimated long-run elasticity indicated that FDI inflows not only lead to higher economic growth and better environmental quality but also widen the income disparity in this country, which may disrupt its SD mission. The other two introduced variables that could also play a part as potential drivers for sustainable development (SD) are trade openness (TO) and financial development (FD). Based on the outcomes, TO has also led to higher economic growth and lower environmental degradation. However, this variable does not have significant impact on income distribution for Singapore. As for FD, it is found to have a significant and positive impact on economic growth and also successfully reduce the income inequality problem. On the contrary, this variable does not have any significant relationship with environmental quality, as indicated by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Mixed evidence of a relationship is detected for other macroeconomic variables in the three estimates models. As the income inequality issue has become more serious, it is important for Singaporean policymakers to focus on attracting more foreign investors to invest in various sectors, in the hope that these companies can offer better wages to the local workers and thus improve income distribution in the country. More attention is needed to explore the potential role of TO and FD as drivers for SD in this country.

This chapter addresses the relationship between bioeconomy and sustainable development in South America. Since the early 21st century, the bioeconomy emerged within countries in the Global North as a new concept and strategy aiming to increase the use of bio-based resources and production processes, not least to foster a transition away from the use of fossil fuels. This paradigm change has been related in different manners to a pathway to more sustainable ways of production, consumption and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the bioeconomy is not inherently sustainable. While there are academic debates on bioeconomy and its sustainability in Europe and the US, discussions on its implementation and implications for sustainability in countries in South America have been covered much less and mainly focused on sectorial approaches. We examine the link between bioeconomy and the SDGs in a broad sense to then analyse the implications and challenges that bioeconomy brings to sustainable development in South American countries, focusing on one of the largest bioeconomy sectors in the region, the case of agriculture. We conclude that while bioeconomy could be a driver for sustainable development, in South American countries this is still contested as bioeconomy strategies and proponents of bioeconomy do not pay sufficient attention to socio-environmental concerns raised by citizens and civil society.

Sustainable development is considered as one of the vital challenges of the 21st century for humanity. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted economic and social life, forcing governments and businesses to reconsider their priorities. There are rare empirical studies on the national innovation system and its relationship to sustainability development for emerging countries. This paper aims at shedding light on how mission-oriented policies have marked sustainable regional development and innovation in Latin America. The present study presents the capabilities that could support the improvement of the national innovation system and, as a consequence, sustainability development. To understand how Latin American countries act on innovation and sustainable development initiatives, two global rankings in these areas, The Global Innovation Index 2020 and The Sustainable Development Report 2020, were analyzed. The results indicate some obstacles must be overcome such as the high levels of social inequality and poverty that still constitute significant challenges for this region. Today’s biggest challenges are facing a pandemic situation and guaranteeing economic development that allows the underprivileged to escape poverty without dooming future generations to an even more degraded environment than the current one. Innovation continues to play a critical role in the transition toward a more sustainable world.

Shenggen FanInternational Food Policy Research Institute and Institute of AgriculturalEconomics of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesLinxiu ZhangCenter for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of SciencesXiaobo ZhangInternational Food Policy Research InstituteI. IntroductionChina is one of the few countries in the developing world that has madeprogress in reducing its total number of poor over the past 25 years.

The article's purpose is to empirically substantiate the impact of human development (HC) on the sustainable development of Azerbaijan in current conditions. Using the principal component method, we have determined the components of HC (a factor of professional development, health status, availability of labor force, financial activation of human potential) and sustainable development (low-tech economic development, medium and high-tech economic, environmental, and social development. Regarding the assessment of the influence of the HC components on sustainable development in Azerbaijan, we used the methods of linear and non-linear regression models. A differentiated nature of the effect of the HC components on sustainable development has been established, depending on the state of health of the population, on the level of technological effectiveness of the economy. It has been substantiated that the driver of sustainable development is the qualitative rather than the quantitative component of HC.

Sustainable development in the knowledge economy faces new challenges. Sustainable development has its stakeholders and drivers; some of them are more important than the others. Financial cooperatives do not seem a substantial stakeholder of sustainable development, but only at the first sight. This paper deals with the evaluation of financial cooperatives as drivers for sustainable development in the knowledge economy through community empowerment. Cooperative banks are stakeholder-value institutions, when the traditional commercial institutions are referred to as shareholder-value ones. Members of cooperatives are their stakeholders at different levels. Small financial cooperatives, like credit unions exist to attain the economic and social goals of their members, and not maximizing profit and shareholder wealth. This enables credit unions to empower communities to pursue specific interests of their local communities. The analysis of statistical data in order to establish whether there is a correlation between the level of prevalence of credit unions in different countries and the level of development of the knowledge economy and the selected sustainable development indicators is presented in this paper. The analysis indicates for an increasing positive correlation depending on credit union industry development stage.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.erem.66.4.5497

The article reviews the problems preventing the formation of the integrated national innovation system of Russia. It has been concluded that most of these problems are related to the lack of a balance in cooperative links both between the institutions, components of national innovation system (NIS), and inside these institutions. The possibility of using the concept of the triple helix, based on the creation of a system of horizontal network interactions, was considered in the process of building the domestic NIS. The resources that the state expands on the imposition of standard actions to develop innovative competencies for the subjects of the innovation system was proposed to redirect on the institutionalization of independently emerging horizontal links between them, and on the analysis and dissemination of positive experience in establishing «innovative links» at all levels.

Knowledge innovation and technological innovation are important components of national innovation systems, the research on their coupling mechanism has become the important mission for building the national innovation system with Chinese characteristics. This paper proceeds with the coupling relationship between knowledge innovation and technological innovation, then the measurement index system of coupling degree is constructed by consulting capacity coupling coefficient model in physics. Based on the panel data of China Statistical Yearbook on Science and Technology in 2010-2014, an empirical study is pulled into to calculate the coupling degree between knowledge innovation and technological innovation for 28 provinces, the main influence factors of coupling degree are analyzed. As a result, the finding shows that the overall coupling degrees of knowledge innovation and technological innovation keep in a higher level in China’s provinces, while, the unbalanced development of the coupling degrees still exists in partial areas.

In this work, we introduce results of comparative analysis of international ratings indexes of innovation systems for their compliance with purposes of sustainable development. Purpose of this research is defining requirements to benchmarking methods of assessing national or regional innovation systems and compare them basing on assumption, that innovation system is aligned with sustainable development concept. Analysis of goal sets and concepts, which underlie observed international composite innovation indexes, comparison of their metrics and calculation techniques, allowed us to reveal opportunities and limitations of using these methods in frames of sustainable development concept. We formulated targets of innovation development on the base of innovation priorities of sustainable socio-economic development. Using comparative analysis of indexes with these targets, we revealed two methods of assessing innovation systems, maximally connected with goals of sustainable development. Nevertheless, today no any benchmarking method, which meets need of innovation systems assessing in compliance with sustainable development concept to a sufficient extent. We suggested practical directions of developing methods, assessing innovation systems in compliance with goals of societal sustainable development.

This study explores the components of national innovation system (NIS) that most contribute to the creation of new enterprises in Baltic state countries for the period from 2005 to 2014. We run ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions for a set of variables that represents four components of NISs, extracted from principal component analysis (PCA), on the number of new enterprises as a dependant variable. We find that infrastructure and economic factors are the most influential components of the NISs in explaining changes in the number of new enterprises in the Baltic state countries. However, regulation factor is insignificant in explaining the dependent variable in Estonia and Lithuania. Moreover, the innovation factor in Latvia does not explain the variation in the number of new enterprises. Hence, it is pivotal for Estonia and Lithuania to improve the institutional and regulation structures in order to increase the number of new enterprises while Latvia needs to encourage innovative activities to capitalize on its industrial competitive advantage.