Intangible investments and innovation propensity: Evidence from the Innobarometer 2013

This paper investigates the innovation impact of intangibleinvestments. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, weargue that through intangible investments, companies acquireknowledge assets that increase their innovativeness. However,a greater innovation impact is expected from investing more intechnological intangibles rather than in intangibles overall, and agreater one from using internal versus external resources. Througha new survey on a large sample of firms in 36 countries, accountingfor different intangibles and addressing their endogeneity throughproper instruments, these hypotheses are partially confirmed.Developing intangibles internally is actually the most innovationimpactingaspect, but not in manufacturing. Instead, by controllingfor this choice and for that of investing in technological intangibles,the intensity of intangible resources is significant for innovation inmanufacturing only. Policy/strategic implications about the needof readdressing the boost to intangible investments for the sake ofinnovation in Europe are drawn accordingly.