Influence of different information sources to innovation performance: evidence from France, Netherlands and Croatia

The analysis on the determinants of various kinds of innovation activities is one of the main issues that could help firm to advance its innovation activities. However, there is limited systematic knowledge about factors that motivate firms to improve innovation performance. What more, it is particularly important to learn more about information sources as the driving forces of different innovations intensity levels since they may vary in different countries. Community Innovation Survey (CIS) tracks the record of the usage of different information sources as the drivers of innovation activities in European Union Countries, as well as other European countries. Current research has been conducted usually on the usage of one country as the sample. Research that would investigate the differences among larger number of countries (three or more) is scarce. The goal of this research is to investigate to what extent the usage of different information sources influences the innovative activities in three countries: Croatia, France and Netherlands, by using CIS data, which covers the period from 2006 to 2008. Two dependent variables have been used in the research, measuring R&D internal activities, and R&D external activities. Following information sources are been used as explanatory variables: firm, suppliers, customers, competitors, consultants, universities, government, and conferences. Our results revealed that firm, supplier, customers, institutions and universities are important information sources for innovation activities in all three countries. In addition, competitors are not been found as the significant information source in any of the investigated countries. Governmental institutions and conferences have a different impact in different countries