Patterns of innovation diffusion and technological competition in Portuguese manufacturing and service industries

This article uses data from the Portuguese Community Innovation Survey (CIS III) to analyse the inter-industry heterogeneity in the diffusion of innovations and level of technological competition in Portuguese manufacturing and service industries. The industries are classified with reference to the relationship between the level of participation in innovation and the strategies of innovative firms. Methods of multivariate statistics are used to synthesize the data and to group the observations into subsets. Four distinctive innovation patterns are identified, defined along the following dimensions: output-orientation of innovation, importance of disembodied innovation, role of technologically advanced innovation and level of innovation opportunities. It is also found that high levels of technological competition tend to occur in sectors with relatively low dimension, productivity and overall investment.