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Open research questions in Innovation Policy and R&D

26 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 1,267 Innovation Policy and R&D papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • A common concern for some of the above analyses is that firms with greater past innovation output may invest in more human capital later, so that the response variable, innovation output, could affect the explanatory variables, such as educational attainment. There has been plethora of anecdotal evidence that biologists and life scientists often prefer to work in startups or small biotech firms over large established ones. The reasons cited include valuing a less formal but more dynamic and innovative environment, with greater freedom to directly influence a project’s entire process and outcome. Such benefits outweigh the downside of higher risk and instability of a young firm. Roach and Sauermann (2024), a new compelling study in such literature (Bengtsson and Hand 2013; Kim 2018), validate “high ability” people’s preference of startups over established firms in the high-tech field. They find that high ability employees are more likely to work in the significantly lower-paying startups than their ‘equivalent counterparts in established firms’. These high ability employees are 2,394 science and engineering Ph.D.s surveyed when they were graduate students in U.S. research universities and later during their first job in industrial R&D. Their results “suggest that preference benefits of startup employment outweigh the opportunity costs of forgoing greater productivity and higher pay in established firms”. Their results further show that talent comes ahead of innovation, not the other way around. Our observation is that startups tend to have top talent but insufficient time to produce many, or any, patents, so in this case, talent comes before results and success. Furthermore, the results from the heterogenous tests above show that biologics require more talent and take longer time to obtain patents. These firms tend to be younger but more advanced, and they have significantly fewer patents than smallmolecule firms do, though they have similar numbers of pipelines that will produce patents later. The evidence suggests again that talent begets and comes ahead of patents, not the other way around. Intuitively, it could be true that with perhaps a significant delay more talent does beget talent by following the footprint of success. The dynamic sequence will be an interesting future research question to explore with a more expansive dataset. 134 Journal of Applied Business and Economics Vol.

    Educational Attainment and Drug Firm Innovation · 2026 · DOI

  • Purpose Digital twin (DT) innovation is increasingly integrated into firms' daily operations, yet it is understudied in existing literature.

    The impact of digital twin innovation on firm operational performance: a knowledge-based perspective · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research should examine patent quality, green productivity, labour market outcomes, and corporate social responsibility/environmental, social and governance (CSR/ESG) indicators to more directly assess how digital innovation contributes to the broader environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development.

    Digital patenting, R&D dynamics, and the economic foundations of sustainable development: Evidence from Chinese listed firms · 2026 · DOI

  • Consequently, caution is warranted when attempting to generalize the results to non-OECD countries with different institutional structures and innovation ecosystems.

    The Relationship Between R&D Tax Incentives and Innovation Performance: An Empirical Analysis of Oecd Countries · 2026 · DOI

  • This paper attempts to determine whether such bundling is warranted by conducting a regional level investigation for Canada, the United States, on the one hand, and Europe, on the other, to (a) identify the structural and socioeconomic factors that drive patenting in the less developed regions of North America and Europe, respectively; and (b) explore how these factors differ between the two contexts.

    Innovating in less developed regions: What drives patenting in the lagging regions of Europe and North America · 2018 · DOI

  • But much remains to be learned. The analytically relevant dimensions of an innovation need to be explored (its "physical" existence, its use in the context of the study, its alternative uses and their relationship to present use, etc. As a result, very little is known about the diffusion of several classes of goods of tremendous economic importance, including virtually all major consumer durables. Too little is known, and much of what is known is, for the reasons enumerated above, neither strictly comparable with related findings nor amenable to the necessary generalization. To the extent that economic vari- 14 No implication is by any means intended that all, or even most, economists believe that the market system, left to its own devices, will produce the optimal rate and kind of technological change; as this point, very little is known about the efficiency of dynamic competitive market phenomena.

    The need for some innovative concepts of innovation: An examination of research on the diffusion of innovations · 1974 · DOI

  • Given the data limitations of this study, it is also important to test on a much larger panel data that incorporates more drug companies. Finally, some of the issues warrant further research.

    Educational Attainment and Drug Firm Innovation · 2026 · DOI

  • While digital innovation is a primary policy response, a quantitative synthesis of its impact on revenue generation and environmental benefits is lacking.

    Digital Innovation in Revenue Administration Reform and Environmental Sustainability: Evidence from a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis · 2026 · DOI

  • There is an evident research gap in the literature on the geography of innovation: very little is known about the innovation activities of rural enterprises in times of crisis.

    The geography of innovation in times of crisis: a comparison of rural and urban RDI patterns during COVID-19 · 2022 · DOI

  • Empirically, little is known about whether the legal distance between the home and host countries of high technology firm influences its equity decisions.

    Legal distance moderation in the inter-partner technology distance on cross-country equity investments: A multilevel analysis of the information & communication technology sector · 2022 · DOI

  • Although the literature suggests that demand-side measures, in particular, public procurement of innovation, might be more effective in stimulating innovation than supply-side measures, empirical evidence on this proposition is scarce.

    Effectiveness of public procurement of innovation versus supply-side innovation measures in manufacturing and service sectors · 2019 · DOI

  • As existing research is still inconclusive regarding the relationship between government subsidization and firms’ technological innovation output, we shed light on the issue by revealing a “U-shaped” relationship between the two.

    EFFECT OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZATION ON CHINESE INDUSTRIAL FIRMS’ TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION EFFICIENCY: A STOCHASTIC FRONTIER ANALYSIS · 2016 · DOI

  • ) Smoking the tobacco number of borrowings traceable from lower- status groups is probably only limited by the amount of research devoted to seeking them.

    The status float phenomenon The upward diffusion of innovation · 1970 · DOI

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26 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 1,267 Innovation Policy and R&D papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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