Complementarities between obstacles to innovation: evidence from France

This paper investigates obstacles to innovation faced by French manufacturing firms. Using CIS2 data, we distinguish between obstacles in postponed projects and obstacles in abandoned projects. First, we highlight the most important barriers to innovation faced by firms, and find that lack of skilled personnel is one of these. Second, based on descriptive analysis, correspondence analysis and multivariate probit models, we explore factors explaining the perception of obstacles, and study complementarities between those obstacles. We show that while adopting a package of policies increases the pace of innovation, a more targeted choice among policies is needed to encourage firms to persevere in their innovative efforts. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.