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The question on how to finance innovation activities of countries has taken a center stage in economic policy discussions in countries and among regional bodies. Such discussions require a policy direction to present alternative ways of financing innovation activities at lower cost in the face of dwindling resource available to countries and regional bodies for innovation activities. One important way of dealing with this challenge is to invest the limited resources in countries and sectors with the potential of higher knowledge spillover to benefit other countries and sectors. In this study therefore, we investigate to determine the knowledge spillover hotspot countries in Europe and how they affect neighbouring country's innovation performance. For the purposes of policy to improve innovation performance in Europe, the knowledge spillover hotspot countries will guide European regional bodies to concentrate innovation investments in countries with the potential of high knowledge spillovers for the benefit of other countries. The study specifically investigated R&D spillover and explicit knowledge spillover hotspots in the manufacturing sectors of Europe and their effects. Data for the study is unstructured and sourced from the World bank with the longest spans being 2005 to 2020 and shortest being 2013 to 2017. In all, nine countries were sampled based on data availability for the study. These countries include Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Belgium, France, Spain and Czech Republic. The study employed panel data analysis. Based on the Hausman test, fixed effect model was chosen as against random effect model. The results of the study show that after controlling for institutional and economic factors and ensuring robustness against heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation R&D spillover hotspots in Europe include Germany and Slovakia whereas explicit knowledge spillover hotspots are Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania and France. The results of the study have shown that the relationship between knowledge spillover from the hotspot countries and surrounding country's innovation varies. For some of the hotspots, the relationship is linear whilst in others the relationship is nonlinear. The study also confirm that explicit knowledge is more susceptible to Knowledge spillover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly globalized environment, one of the important aspects for knowledge development and usage has been the advantage of benefiting from knowledge spillover across international boundaries. The knowledge literature recognizes the importance of the combining internal and external knowledge in the innovation process. Knowledge spillover from abroad is an important channel of external knowledge needed to complement the innovation activities in the domestic economies of countries. However, the complementarities of external knowledge and domestic innovation activities also remains a thorny issue that remain unresolved in the knowledge literature. On one hand, there is a believe that combinatorial efforts of domestic and foreign knowledge activities are a good recipe for innovation. There are other strands of literature that are concerned that when foreign knowledge is not complementary with domestic innovation activities increased innovation may not be realized. Contrary to the widely held view of the positive impact of FDI on host economies, the literature shows a rather complex relationship between FDI and economic outcomes in V4 countries. OECD countries, being the main trading partners of V4 countries, the study therefore investigates the FDI channel for knowledge spillover from OECD countries and how such knowledge spillover complements V4 countries innovation activities to affect innovation outcomes. Data for the study is panel data on the V4 countries, spanning 2003 to 2012 which is sourced from the OECD database. The study applies panel regression analysis and controls for country and time fixed effect to determine the role of FDI knowledge spillover from OECD countries on innovation outcome in V4 countries. The findings of the study indicate that proportionate change in innovation is greater than a proportionate change in FDI knowledge spillover in the opposite direction. The results of the analysis show that knowledge spillover from FDI does not complement V4 countries' internal R&D activities to improve innovation. FDI knowledge spillover channel is not a good complement to domestic R&D activities to enhance V4 countries' innovation performance. It is concluded that, FDI knowledge spillover channel does not complement innovation activities to improve innovation outcome. The study provides useful practical implications and recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge generation, in contemporary times, has dictated the economic strength and national and regional competitive advantage. The advent of the open innovation model has driven firms to collaborate and engage in external interactions to incite their innovation spark to become even more competitive globally and nationally. There have been a wealth of success in creating intellectual capital in the European Union. In line with that, subsequent funding have been provided for small and medium sized firms (SMEs) with the view of assisting them to individually or cooperatively generate intellectual capital. However, even as human resources, cooperation and other environmental factors have been acclaimed to influence regional intellectual capital capacity, we question whether these factors offer an interactively significant influence on themselves in creating intellectual capital. This will enable identification of catalytic indicators to expertly position regional activities that generate regional competitive advantage. Using the Structural equation modelling (SEM) and data from European Innovation Survey (2018), research aims to test the interactive influence of the selected indicators of intellectual capital and their significance in generation intellectual capital represented by patents, trademarks and design applications. The results revealed that whilst research system attractiveness and firm-to-firm or academia linkages were very significant in generating intellectual capital, human capital were not significant in generating intellectual capital contrary to mass of literature. Attractiveness of research systems were strongly significant in affecting the human resource structure and innovation friendliness of member states and generation of intellectual capital. Private, public and venture capital were found to have been strongly influenced by labour structure and friendliness of a geography whilst it also strongly affected the cooperation tendencies of firms and academia. Policies that aligned regional strengths to these findings were further recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge management has been becoming a decisive activity in the current openly competitive globalized economy. It has been empirically proven that knowledge, in combination with traditional production factors, drives the growth of enterprises, nations, and regions. Therefore, most countries tend to be knowledge based. The creation, dissemination, and use of knowledge represent key processes that help companies with their innovation activities. Consequently, innovation allows companies to generate added value and get ahead of their competitors. However, a number of recent studies have shown that innovation does not occur in isolation and innovation factors affect each industry differently. This is why economic entities fail – because they are unable to exploit the potential of cooperation (for example, using the Triple Helix principle in networks) and by ineffectively spending public funds to support innovative activities. On the other hand, Germany has the largest economy in the European Union and one of the strongest and most competitive economies in the world (Germany was ranked fourth in the 2015–2016 rankings of the Global Competitiveness Index carried out by the World Economic Forum). This is due to the fact that stimulus for investment, a good climate for innovation, and private-sector investment has crucial importance for the German government. Therefore, the goal of this article is to analyze the drivers influencing businesses´ innovation activities in different industries in Germany. We show that different factors influence the innovation activities of different industries. Our results provide (1) practical implications for policy makers (not only in Germany) and (2) an initial analysis of German industries and a proposal for partners and factors that affect the innovative activities of different sectors. This proposal could help other economies support the creation of innovation (especially, countries from Central and Eastern Europe – the CEE Countries). For the analysis, we created original multiple linear regression models using data from the Community Innovation Survey conducted in Germany between the years 2010– 2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]