Innovation failure, training for innovative activities and public support for innovation: Multi-annual evidence from emerging European innovation systems

One of the key challenges for innovative companies is reducing innovation failures and the loss of scarce resources. This study investigates two under-explored aspects of innovation failure: training for innovative activities and public support for innovation. It uses data from five waves of the Community Innovation Survey (2008–2018) on more than 29,000 firms in seven emerging European innovation systems known for their weak innovation capacity, information asymmetries, and systemic failures, which increase the risk of innovation failure. We employ a matching treatment analysis method and assess the robustness of our findings with the help of multi-valued treatment, the lasso machine learning treatment technique, and entropy balancing. This study identifies the diverse effects of training for innovative activities and national and EU public support for innovation on groups of innovation incumbents and entrants. The findings show that a combination of training for innovative activities and EU innovation support helps firms reduce their chances of innovation failure. The results reaffirm the strong reliance of firms in these economies on EU funding and the limitations of national innovation policies. The findings can inform the design and implementation of innovation policies in emerging innovation systems and multi-level contexts, such as the EU.