• Description

In January 2008, the U.S. Department of Commerce released a report, Innovation Measurement: Tracking the State of Innovation in the American Economy (DOC, 2008), which recommended "a stronger framework for identifying and measuring innovation in the national economy." As part of that work, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) requested that the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) explore the business perspectives of innovation. The resulting report, Measuring Innovation and Intangibles: A Business Perspective (Stone et al., 2008,) created a compendium of the logic and methods businesses use to measure and monetize innovation. It also identified sources for, and gaps in, innovation data and outlined critical areas for future research. This report extends that work and presents two alternative frameworks for measuring innovation. The first framework focuses on measuring innovation activities at the firm/organization level. The second takes a broader macro-level look at the fundamental investments that allow firms and other organizations to carry out innovation activities.