Innovation in Norwegian industries – testing a new taxonomy

Recent innovation literature has emphasised several aspects in company innovation processes: Innovation processes are systemic, innovation processes are market-specific, learning plays an important role in innovation and technological change is a major issue in innovation and economic development processes. This paper introduces a company classification rooted in these dimensions. We divide industries by engineer density (high/low) and probability to have innovation collaboration (high/low). This gives us four industry groups; • Systemic industries (low engineering intensity, often innovation collaboration), • Craft-based industries (low engineering, less often collaboration), • Complex technological systems industries (high engineering, less often collabo-ration) and • Research-oriented industries (high engineering, less often collaboration). Using these groups as independent variable, we investigate variation in innovative activity (process vs products, innovation barriers, innovation objectives, ICT orientation, R&D intensity etc.) The Norwegian economy is dominated by systemic industries; about 50 percent of the private sector employees work in such industries. For these industries, we find that there are indications of a relation between size and innovativity. We also find that systemic innovators tend to have in general lower expenditure costs than for example craft-based industries, but slightly higher innovation rates. Systemic industries have more often more informal innovation processes, with the exception of one (Mining). These industries tend to be low on the process innovation axis, but quite spread on the product innovation axis.