Robust determinants of companies' capacity to innovate: a Bayesian model averaging approach

Robustness of innovation determinants is a crucial component for the company's capacity to innovate and is increasingly central to our understanding of country (national) innovation capacity. The large number of internal and external determinants therefore raises the question of finding/perceiving the robust determinants of companies' capacity to innovate. By using a Bayesian Model Averaging approach, the World Economic Forum's (WEF) Competitiveness dataset of 135 countries, 10 periods, and a total of 1.239 observations, has been analysed. From 62 explanatory determinants, 27 determinants were found to be significantly and robustly correlated with companies' capacity to innovate. Our results show that the large number of the previously suggested innovation determinants is not robust. A holistic approach that jointly considers the internal and external determinants of CCI is proposed. A central ingredient of this approach is direct public and private financial support for performing research and development.