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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can play an important role in the diffusion of wine innovation. Employing a market dynamics approach where the interaction of producers (supply) and buyers (demand) are seen to influence innovation creation, a conceptual framework is applied to the global wine industry to identify commercialization strategies for SMEs. The framework identifies four commercialization environments or clusters; Innovation Nirvana, Innovation Push, Innovation Pull and Innovation Wasteland as determined by the principle market dimensions of wine supply (innovation-push) and wine demand (market-pull). A k-means cluster analysis is undertaken on twenty-two wine-producing member countries of the OECD to determine which jurisdictions occupy each of the four clusters. The study results is a diverse distribution of old world and new world wine producing countries across all of the identified commercialization environments. Conclusions about national commercialization environments and related strategies for wine industry entrepreneurs are presented. These findings have implications for wine industry SMEs, investors and agri-policy makers. Keywords: Innovation, Global wine industry, OECD

It has been recognized that innovation drives the long-run economic growth of nations and increasingly governments are placing innovation at the center of their economic growth strategies. International variation in the investment on innovation presents an opportunity to examine key enablers of innovation-driving policy choices. Countries find themselves at different stages of economic development and innovation performance and so their relative levels of innovation inputs and outputs are likely to be different. In this study we employ a systems of innovation approach to examine what enables improvements in innovation potential among developed countries. Using data from the 2017 Global Innovation Index (GII) Report, we subjected 770 data measures to an analysis of 242 relationships involving changes in the GII’s innovation inputs/outputs scores and overall innovation potential of 35 OECD countries over a five year period (2012 to 2016). Our findings suggest that instituting policies that improve access to open and competitive markets is the most significant enabler for raising a developed country’s innovation potential.