Innovation patterns in firms and intra-industry heterogeneity empirical evidence from Turkey

This paper aims to explore sector-level sources of intra-industry heterogeneity of innovation patterns among Turkish firms. We constructed a taxonomy of innovative firms and explored the different modes of innovation. We then analyzed the sector-level determinants of intra-industry heterogeneity. Analysis results indicate that groups of firms within the same sector that display distinct innovation characteristics and firm's resource position, knowledge base, and cooperation behavior have a bearing on firms' innovative characteristics. Furthermore, our analysis shows that variables related to variety generation within a sector increase heterogeneity. In contrast, larger average firm size or concentration of firms that belong to a group reduces heterogeneity in that sector. Our analysis results show that firms with distinct innovative characteristics populate the sectors. Therefore, sectoral innovation policies should target specific groups rather than emphasizing innovation typologies based on vague abstractions. Moreover, heterogeneity of innovative behavior can be a risk-mitigation tool to control the adverse effects of path dependency and lock-in.