Abstract:

This paper contributes to the study of innovation persistence at firm level, focusing on the Greek case. Empirical research so far uses patent and survey data for this purpose. Therefore, innovation persistence is examined for a sample of 300 Greek firms. Innovation activities are measured through related patents and persistence is determined by the number of patents that each firm has developed during the period 1988-2010. The analysis focuses on the main firm features behind innovation persistence. Results show that innovation persistence, as nearly half of firms patent more than once and for subsequent years during the whole period of analysis. The phenomenon of innovation persistence is more obvious among the heaviest firm innovators, which account for 30 firms in total. These 30 heavy persistent innovators are firms that: (a) are involved in different economic activities at 2-digit level of analysis, (b) have a small size based on their total employment, (c) are characterized by different export shares, (d) develop relatively many technologies based on the technological content of their patents and (e) these new technologies are not usually related to their main production line. However, the analysis also confirms that there are inter-sectoral differences, meaning that technology-specific factors are important. The study and the assessment of firm-level innovation persistence have clear implications for both innovation policy and the understanding of long-term industry dynamics. Especially now, that Greece has started discussing on restructuring its development process, this paper could contribute to this discussion.