12. The Economic Relevance, Competitiveness, and Innovation Ability of Non-R&D-Performing and Non-R&D-Intensive Firms: Summary of the Empirical Evidence and Further Outlook

This book has attempted to look inside the “black box” of non-R&D-intensive sectors and firms to investigate their economic relevance, competitiveness, and innovativeness. Given that non-R&D-intensive sectors and firms used to be neglected both as innovators and innovation drivers by the mainstream innovation literature, this anthology reflects the latest research from different collaborative projects at Fraunhofer ISI. Although the presented research focuses on the German manufacturing industry, the results are broadly relevant, as they reflect economic and structural patterns that are likely present—to varying degrees—in other industrialised countries. For instance, other industrialised countries within and beyond the EU even have higher shares of non-R&D-intensive firms and industries than Germany. Starting with an overview of the research from the past decade (Chap. 2), which has shown that non-R&D-intensive sectors and firms play an important role in national competitiveness and innovativeness in developed economies, eight chapters have provided details from different analytical angles on the six leading research questions stated in the editorial of the book.