Firms engaged in innovation activity face different obstacles that may hamper or even deter their innovative projects. In the midst of the current economic crisis, firms’ access to external sources of finance to carry out R&D activity and to implement innovative processes has become more difficult. Along with financial barriers, firms might encounter other types of obstacles that may hinder their innovation activity, like the lack of appropriate information on technologies and markets or the uncertainty of the demand. Recently, thanks to the increasing availability of more precise and comprehensive information about firms’ innovative activities, scholars have provided interesting insights into the impact of different type of obstacles to firms’ behaviour at different stages of the innovation cycle and the possible answers from public policies.
The objective of this conference is twofold. Firstly, the morning session will be devoted to a discussion about the current state of the art of the academic research on the obstacles to innovation activity. Secondly, in the afternoon session a round table discussion will take place where the main characteristics of the current Catalan and Spanish policy measures will be analysed. In Spain, the government approved recently the new “Science and Technology Strategy 2013- 2020”.
The conference is addressed to researchers, policy makers, firms, PhD and master students and, generally speaking, to everyone interested in the analysis of the innovation activities of firms and on R&D and innovation policies.