Abstract:

The contribution and the role of innovation in corporate success, technological leadership and economic development, both at national and regional level, have been incorporated in the assumptions of theoretical evidence and further confirmed by the results of empirical research. Both of them argue that it is very important for a country to produce innovations, but even more important than that, in the nowadays global economic environment, is the production of competitive innovations, namely innovations which could be competitive at the international level. In this context this paper aims at studying the production of innovation in Greece, but from a different and more global perspective: It positions and classifies Greece at the international innovation environment, comparing its innovation performance with the respective of other countries, based on the patent records that have been recorded at the three most important patent offices (e.g. EPO, USPTO and PCT). The analysis and, therefore, results focus on first comparing the Greek performance with the respective of other countries, second locating the presence of technological fields of better absolute and relative performance, third positioning Greece at the international innovation landscape and four integrating all the above in an attempt to provide an answer to a very important ‘national’ question: Is Greece a part of the international pattern of innovation production developing similar and compatible innovations to the respective of other countries? The answer to this question could stimulate a wider discussion on the ‘future’ of the Greek competitiveness and on its agenda of innovation policy.