Learning Modes, Types of Innovation and Economic Performance

This contribution focuses on a current heated debate on learning modes employed by the firms, and their impact on innovation and economic output. The interactive approach developed by the Scandinavian school on innovation systems characterized two key learning modes as science and technology-based innovation‟ (STI) and learning-bydoing, by-using and by-interacting-based innovation (DUI). This work analyzes first the separate and combined impact of such modes of learning and innovation on two types of innovation output: product and process. In this operation, this work produces interesting and challenging results. Moreover, this paper offers the original hypothesis that these learning modes have a differentiated impact on product and process innovation. Simultaneously, this contribution adds a further analytical element, which is the explicit connection to the capacity of firms to transform innovation output (product and process) in economic performance. A two-stage mode is formulated and applied in the context of an extensive database of Spanish manufacturing and service firms (PITEC). This allows implementing an original time-series analysis that leads to obtaining insightful results that question former analyses and might heat further the debate on the most effective learning and innovation modes applied by firms as a means to gain competitiveness in open markets.