Determinants of the national innovative capacity:: An analysis to the European reality

The national economic capacity is intimately associated with the dynamics of innovation that depend on specific features and factors of each country. This paper aims to analyze the innovative capacity of the European countries, based on the European Innovation Scoreboard 2004 data, referring to 33 countries. Using clusters analysis to verify how the different countries studied are positioned regarding the patent registration indicators we determine which factors distinguish between these groups of countries in terms of innovative capacity. The results point to the existence of four groups of countries, and the factors identified point to aspects related to the institutional efficiency, the societies' cultural values associated with the level of hierarchy or "power distance" and with aspects such as the level of population with tertiary education and the percentages of expenses with research and development applied by the companies.