Mediating Role of Firm R&D in Creating Product and Process Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Norway

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Many thanks to the authors for providing me the opportunity f reading and commenting their work and helping the improvement of the document. At first I would like to underline the importance of the topic, however, I will raise some comments on the content which I feel are jeopardizing the overall content.

At first, the authors mention "The latest edition of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012-2014 was employed in the paper", however, in my perspective that does not correspond to reality, as, there is available the CIS 2016 as well as the the CIS 2018 with plenty of papers already published. 

Then, as the authors know well, Norway is an outstanding example of innovation ecosystem, being an established innovation leader. The information needs to be explained to the readers in somewhere in the introduction, as the perspective of all your debate will change based on that. It is a favoured context, as a consequence, there has to be a critical perspective on this point.

Recent literature concerning the policy effects encompassing CIS data is missisng - I feel that a comparison with Costa, J. Carrots or Sticks: Which Policies Matter the Most in Sustainable Resource Management? Resources 2021, 10, 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources10020012 will add value.

The hypotheses described should be generalistic, not particular - Norway is your application country, however, your findings must be generalistic to justify publication. Please rephrase.

At present the helix framework has evolved to the quintuple structure (see Carayannis' papers on the topic). Moreover, the CIS has variables allowing for the approach ofthenew helices. As a consequence, I would like the authors to enlarge their analysis to the user-community and the environment.

In section 3, the authors mention the reduction of the respondent sample to 100 firms. What is the underlying reason for that? There is a need for justification as this choice may damage the robustness of the findings. 

Given that there is a sub sample, if there is a robust justification to do so, the reader needs to be enlightened with the descriptives of the overall sample and the sub-sample to understand what to expect next.

Why did you focus only on product innovation when there are five types of innovations classically discussed in the literature and present on the CIS data? That choice needs further justification and an adjustment in the title, as previous literature shows that the predictors vary with the innovation types.

Why did you chose only Government funds? There are 3 other types of funds in the CIS database. This needs to be further explained and highlighted in the conclusions as the CIS encompasses European Funds, Local Funds and other funds as well. The results may vary. 

In this vein, there is a need to reformulate the debate, as your findings may only apply to internal policy issues. (you can either reformulate the proxy and re-run the new model).

Also, in a paper like this, readers are expecting implications and policy recommendations based on your findings. Please reorganize your last section to meet this expectation.

Lastly, the referencing does not follow the journal style, please adjust to meet the standards of the publication. 

Thank you for considering my comments,

Wish you the best of luck with your research.

 

 

Author Response

We gratefully acknowledge the help provided by constructive comments of the anonymous referee. We attempted to include the suggestions of the reviewer as follows:

Many thanks to the authors for providing me the opportunity of reading and commenting their work and helping the improvement of the document. At first I would like to underline the importance of the topic, however, I will raise some comments on the content which I feel are jeopardizing the overall content.

Re: Dear reviewer, we really appreciate your time, recommendations and feedback which will help us improve the current form of the article. Please re-evaluate our article, which has been significantly modified. All changes are marked in colour. We hope we have improved the quality of the article. Thank you.

At first, the authors mention "The latest edition of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012-2014 was employed in the paper", however, in my perspective that does not correspond to reality, as, there is available the CIS 2016 as well as the the CIS 2018 with plenty of papers already published.

Re: Thank you for your warning. To be honest, unfortunately, the CIS 2012-2014 data are the latest edition that we currently have. We asked Eurostat number of times and still waiting for the access to have a new data. We deleted the information about “the latest edition”. We hope that the results are still relevant and that you will understand. Thank you.

Then, as the authors know well, Norway is an outstanding example of innovation ecosystem, being an established innovation leader. The information needs to be explained to the readers in somewhere in the introduction, as the perspective of all your debate will change based on that. It is a favoured context, as a consequence, there has to be a critical perspective on this point.

Re: Thanks you for your recommendation. We added further explanations as follows:

“Although policy makers in Norway pay too much attention to innovation development at the national and regional level, the level of investment in R&D is lower than in other Nordic and European countries (Solesvik, 2017). Besides, Norway economy is not within the first top ten range and it is still left behind other Nordic countries’ economies in terms of innovation development.

Following above arguments and considering the facts that Norwegian firms have relied on collaboration (Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2014) and have tended to pursue collaborative innovation strategies (decreasing investments in internal R&D) and interacting more with external partners than firms in most other European economies (Fagerberg et al., 2009; Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2013), we aim to analyse how government funding and cooperation influence on R&D activities and innovation of firms in Norway. Following arguments of Solesvik (2017), there is a need to shift towards development of new generation of innovation models, specifically quadruple-helix. For these purposes, we analyse the influence of governmental funding on firms´ product and process innovation and on R&D activities. Moreover, taking into account the fact that previous research focused primarily on the issue of triple-helix cooperation in Norway (for example Strand et al., 2017; Larsen et al., 2018), we consider the influence of cooperation based on both the triple-helix and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation. Therefore, this research contribute to the current state of the knowledge on the influence of cooperation based on the triple- and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation in the case of Norway, whereas we are considering the mediating role of research and development activities. In addition, this research also provide several practical implications.”

Recent literature concerning the policy effects encompassing CIS data is missisng - I feel that a comparison with Costa, J. Carrots or Sticks: Which Policies Matter the Most in Sustainable Resource Management? Resources 2021, 10, 12. https://doi.org/10.3390/resources10020012 will add value.

Re: Thank you for your recommendation. We added the recent literature you recommend in our data collection part.

The hypotheses described should be generalistic, not particular - Norway is your application country, however, your findings must be generalistic to justify publication. Please rephrase.

Re: Thank you for your suggestion; we deleted Norway in the text for generalization of the hypotheses. Moreover, we added additional hypotheses.

At present the helix framework has evolved to the quintuple structure (see Carayannis' papers on the topic). Moreover, the CIS has variables allowing for the approach ofthenew helices. As a consequence, I would like the authors to enlarge their analysis to the user-community and the environment.

Re: Thank you very much for this important point. Based on your comment, we expanded our theory part as well as analysis part by adding the fourth helix represented by users. We did our best to expand the analyses and performed number of new analyses that are now included in our article. Unfortunately, we are also limited by the data that are available. Thank you for understanding.

In section 3, the authors mention the reduction of the respondent sample to 100 firms. What is the underlying reason for that? There is a need for justification as this choice may damage the robustness of the findings. Given that there is a sub sample, if there is a robust justification to do so, the reader needs to be enlightened with the descriptives of the overall sample and the sub-sample to understand what to expect next.

Re: Thank you very much for your remark. We extended our data and we, in total, analysed 5,045 firms.

Why did you focus only on product innovation when there are five types of innovations classically discussed in the literature and present on the CIS data? That choice needs further justification and an adjustment in the title, as previous literature shows that the predictors vary with the innovation types.

Re: Dear reviewer, we finally performed additional analyses and included process innovation. We also changed the title.

Why did you chose only Government funds? There are 3 other types of funds in the CIS database. This needs to be further explained and highlighted in the conclusions as the CIS encompasses European Funds, Local Funds and other funds as well. The results may vary. 

Re: Thank you for your recommendation, we kept government funding and proposed other kinds of funding for future research. The reason is that we want to focus on the impact of policy from the national government level because the government in Norway has a lot of attention on innovation. And we want to examine how much their support affect on the firms in a region. We hope that it is clear from introduction. If not, we could add additional arguments. Thank you.

In this vein, there is a need to reformulate the debate, as your findings may only apply to internal policy issues. (you can either reformulate the proxy and re-run the new model). Also, in a paper like this, readers are expecting implications and policy recommendations based on your findings. Please reorganize your last section to meet this expectation.

Re: Thank you, we significantly modified discussion part and added other recommendations as follows:

“This study provides also some practical implications. We can state that governmental funding and triple- and quadruple-helix based cooperation are vital for firms’ product and process innovation; however, there is a need for continual support of firms´ research and development. Therefore, we propose firms to focus primarily on internal R&D and absorptive capacity. Following Kafouros et al. (2020), there is a relationship between firms ability to absorb external knowledge and R&D intensity whereas support of different dimensions of firms´ absorptive capacity (for example employee skills and organizational practices for exchanging and transferring knowledge across and within the firm) seems to be necessary. Moreover, according to Aldieri et al. (2018), it is crucial to build firms´ adaptive capacity to avoid firms´ potential lock-in when firms´ strategy may make the firm uncapable of coping with external shocks. In these cases, we also propose firms to focus on R&D trainings and on building internal and external social capital, which play a major role in forming knowledge sharing intentions and behaviours (Akhavan & Mahdi Hosseini, 2016). According to Solesvik (2017), it would be also important to stimulate international cooperation and attraction of foreign experts into R&D for firms in Norway.

Next, we propose government to support firms R&D activities (primarily) as well as to support the creation of pro-innovative environment. This includes, for example, reducing the administrative burden on firms, but also finding common goals for firms and universities. Firms should also make more use of contract research with universities, especially in the early stages of product development. As we have shown, such R&D collaboration can be much more effective. Firms could also cooperate with other firms to acquire additional external knowledge sources, in order to boost their internal R&D activities for development of firm innovation. Our results also showed that governmental funding influence positively firms´ research and development. Therefore, we propose public authorities to primarily focus on specific firms´ needs regarding their research and development. Following the example of Oslo, which introduced the Programme for Regional R&D and Innovation and improved at the position of the innovative leader, there is a need to continue with systematic support of research and development. Moreover, according to Solesvik (2017), as the innovation models are not static, it is necessary to follow the new trends in the modern economy, which lead to the development of new generation of innovation models, specifically quadruple-helix model including civil society.”

Lastly, the referencing does not follow the journal style, please adjust to meet the standards of the publication. 

Re: Thank you for warning; we will correct all the references if the article accepted for publication.

Dear reviewer let us thank you once again for your time and willingness to help us improve our paper.

Kind regards,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The author must check twice the numbers of each chapter and subchapter, because there are some minor errors (e.g. subchapter “3.2. Data collection” is followed by subchapter “4.1. Confirmatory Factor Analysis”).

2. For a rigorous approach, the research design (subchapter 3.1.) must be presented very clear. I recommend the author to present all the content of section 3 (“Methodology”) in a logical sequence, as steps or phases of the research method (for each step, a brief description is required, to justify the inclusion of the step in the research method). Just as an example, “Step 1 – Choosing the proper method for analysis” (What theoretical method was used ?, Which are the main reasons for choosing that method ? Which are the main advantages of the PLS-SEM method comparing with other methods of analysis ? etc.); “Step 2 Identify the main variables for the analysis” (Which are the main variables ?); “Step 3 Choosing the proper period for analysis” etc. The actual form of section 3 is good enough, but it must be rewritten according the above suggestion.

3. Practical implications of this research are poor and very general. The author said that “This study provides also some practical implications. We can state that government funding and triple-helix based cooperation are crucial for the firms’ innovation; however, there is a need for firms´ research and development activities, such as internal R&D. We propose government to support firms R&D activities (primarily) as well as to support the creation of pro-innovative environment. This includes, for example, reducing the administrative burden on firms, but also finding common goals for firms and universities.”. These phrases are very general and in most cases they are valid for any country, not necessarily for Norway. Furthermore, you don’t have to conduct any scientific analysis in order to discover that “government funding and triple-helix based cooperation are crucial for the firms’ innovation”. I suggest the author to try to identify whether there are some connections between the main findings of the research paper and some suggestive / particular phenomena / processes within the economic or social reality from Norway.

4. In direct connection with the previous remark, the author must present the results of the paper from other suggestive perspectives (not only from the government point of view. For instance, it would be wise to see the results of the research from the community point of view, or from the higher education institution perspective, or from the employee point of view etc.

5. Every table or figure in text must present the source. If the table or the figure is the result of the research itself, then the author should mention like this (or similar): “Author’s own conception / calculation, based on XYZ software”.

6. In order to increase the value of this research, the author may take into account to present the novelty degree of this paper; in other words, what this paper brings new to the science / practice, comparing with other previous (already published) papers ?

Author Response

We gratefully acknowledge the help provided by constructive comments of the anonymous referee. We attempted to include the suggestions of the reviewer as follows:

Dear reviewer, we really appreciate your time, recommendations and feedback which will help us improve the current form of the article. Please re-evaluate our article, which has been significantly modified. All changes are marked in colour. We hope we have improved the quality of the article. Thank you. Please note that we were asked by one of the reviewers to include also the fourth helix and therefore we performed additional analyses.

1. The author must check twice the numbers of each chapter and subchapter, because there are some minor errors (e.g. subchapter “3.2. Data collection” is followed by subchapter “4.1. Confirmatory Factor Analysis”).

Re: Thank you for your comment. We are ashamed of this mistake. We corrected the number of the chapter.

2. For a rigorous approach, the research design (subchapter 3.1.) must be presented very clear. I recommend the author to present all the content of section 3 (“Methodology”) in a logical sequence, as steps or phases of the research method (for each step, a brief description is required, to justify the inclusion of the step in the research method). Just as an example, “Step 1 – Choosing the proper method for analysis” (What theoretical method was used ?, Which are the main reasons for choosing that method ? Which are the main advantages of the PLS-SEM method comparing with other methods of analysis ? etc.); “Step 2 Identify the main variables for the analysis” (Which are the main variables ?); “Step 3 Choosing the proper period for analysis” etc. The actual form of section 3 is good enough, but it must be rewritten according the above suggestion.

Re: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have already rearranged the methodology part according to your suggestion. We hope that this part is clearer for now. However, if you see that this part is not clear enough, we will rewrite it again.

3. Practical implications of this research are poor and very general. The author said that “This study provides also some practical implications. We can state that government funding and triple-helix based cooperation are crucial for the firms’ innovation; however, there is a need for firms´ research and development activities, such as internal R&D. We propose government to support firms R&D activities (primarily) as well as to support the creation of pro-innovative environment. This includes, for example, reducing the administrative burden on firms, but also finding common goals for firms and universities.”. These phrases are very general and in most cases they are valid for any country, not necessarily for Norway. Furthermore, you don’t have to conduct any scientific analysis in order to discover that “government funding and triple-helix based cooperation are crucial for the firms’ innovation”. I suggest the author to try to identify whether there are some connections between the main findings of the research paper and some suggestive / particular phenomena / processes within the economic or social reality from Norway.

Re: Thank you very much; we completely changed this part as follows:

“This study provides also some practical implications. We can state that governmental funding and triple- and quadruple-helix based cooperation are vital for firms’ product and process innovation; however, there is a need for continual support of firms´ research and development. Therefore, we propose firms to focus primarily on internal R&D and absorptive capacity. Following Kafouros et al. (2020), there is a relationship between firms ability to absorb external knowledge and R&D intensity whereas support of different dimensions of firms´ absorptive capacity (for example employee skills and organizational practices for exchanging and transferring knowledge across and within the firm) seems to be necessary. Moreover, according to Aldieri et al. (2018), it is crucial to build firms´ adaptive capacity to avoid firms´ potential lock-in when firms´ strategy may make the firm uncapable of coping with external shocks. In these cases, we also propose firms to focus on R&D trainings and on building internal and external social capital, which play a major role in forming knowledge sharing intentions and behaviours (Akhavan & Mahdi Hosseini, 2016). According to Solesvik (2017), it would be also important to stimulate international cooperation and attraction of foreign experts into R&D for firms in Norway.

Next, we propose government to support firms R&D activities (primarily) as well as to support the creation of pro-innovative environment. This includes, for example, reducing the administrative burden on firms, but also finding common goals for firms and universities. Firms should also make more use of contract research with universities, especially in the early stages of product development. As we have shown, such R&D collaboration can be much more effective. Firms could also cooperate with other firms to acquire additional external knowledge sources, in order to boost their internal R&D activities for development of firm innovation. Our results also showed that governmental funding influence positively firms´ research and development. Therefore, we propose public authorities to primarily focus on specific firms´ needs regarding their research and development. Following the example of Oslo, which introduced the Programme for Regional R&D and Innovation and improved at the position of the innovative leader, there is a need to continue with systematic support of research and development. Moreover, according to Solesvik (2017), as the innovation models are not static, it is necessary to follow the new trends in the modern economy, which lead to the development of new generation of innovation models, specifically quadruple-helix model including civil society.”

4. In direct connection with the previous remark, the author must present the results of the paper from other suggestive perspectives (not only from the government point of view. For instance, it would be wise to see the results of the research from the community point of view, or from the higher education institution perspective, or from the employee point of view etc.

Re: Thank you for your recommendation; we add some new points in our article. We also extended our research and we also focused on the cooperation based on the quadruple-helix principles.

5. Every table or figure in text must present the source. If the table or the figure is the result of the research itself, then the author should mention like this (or similar): “Author’s own conception / calculation, based on XYZ software”.

Re: We really appreciate your remark. We have added the sources under all the table.

6. In order to increase the value of this research, the author may take into account to present the novelty degree of this paper; in other words, what this paper brings new to the science / practice, comparing with other previous (already published) papers?

Re: Thank you for these recommendations, we improved some parts and incorporated contributions of our research. Please see the introduction part:

“Following above arguments and considering the facts that Norwegian firms have relied on collaboration (Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2014) and have tended to pursue collaborative innovation strategies (decreasing investments in internal R&D) and interacting more with external partners than firms in most other European economies (Fagerberg et al., 2009; Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2013), we aim to analyse how government funding and cooperation influence on R&D activities and innovation of firms in Norway. Following arguments of Solesvik (2017), there is a need to shift towards development of new generation of innovation models, specifically quadruple-helix. For these purposes, we analyse the influence of governmental funding on firms´ product and process innovation and on R&D activities. Moreover, taking into account the fact that previous research focused primarily on the issue of triple-helix cooperation in Norway (for example Strand et al., 2017; Larsen et al., 2018), we consider the influence of cooperation based on both the triple-helix and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation. Therefore, this research contribute to the current state of the knowledge on the influence of cooperation based on the triple- and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation in the case of Norway, whereas we are considering the mediating role of research and development activities. In addition, this research also provide several practical implications.”

Dear reviewer let us thank you once again for your time and willingness to help us improve our paper.

Kind regards,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This study explores the impact of public funding and cooperation on R&D and product innovation in Norway. The following comments can improve the study.

In the introductory sections, contributions of the study should be explicitly stated and briefly elaborated.

From the literature review in Section 2.1, it is not clear whether the study focusses on SMEs or on all firms, as the first sentence in this section mentions small businesses.

Also in Section 2.1 it is not clear what is meant by innovation in Hypothesis 2. Innovation can be measured as product or process innovations (also marketing and organizations), it can also be measured by patent application, innovative sales, etc.

What is meant by “cooperation based on the triple-helix principles” in Hypotheses 5 and 6?

Why are only 100 firm in the CIS survey in Norway? Please comment on a small number of firms given that the CIS is usually a large-scale survey.

How is the endogeneity of public support addressed, which is a well-known issue in the evaluation of innovation public support (see e.g. Aerts and Schmidt, 2008; Clausen, 2009; Dimos and Pugh, 2016, among some of the references included in the study)?

In Table 1, it is not clear if the dependent and independent variables are binary (dummy), categorical or continuous.

NFI values in Table 3 is not explained in the text.

It is not clear what the saturated and estimated models are (Table 3).

Author Response

We gratefully acknowledge the help provided by constructive comments of the anonymous referee. We attempted to include the suggestions of the reviewer as follows:

This study explores the impact of public funding and cooperation on R&D and product innovation in Norway. The following comments can improve the study.

Re: Dear reviewer, we really appreciate your time, recommendations and feedback which will help us improve the current form of the article. Please re-evaluate our article, which has been significantly modified. All changes are marked in colour. We hope we have improved the quality of the article. Thank you.

In the introductory sections, contributions of the study should be explicitly stated and briefly elaborated.

Re: Thank you for your recommendation, we included the contributions in the introduction as follows (please note that we were asked by one of the reviewers to include also the fourth helix and therefore we performed additional analyses):

“Following above arguments and considering the facts that Norwegian firms have relied on collaboration (Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2014) and have tended to pursue collaborative innovation strategies (decreasing investments in internal R&D) and interacting more with external partners than firms in most other European economies (Fagerberg et al., 2009; Fitjar & Rodríguez-Pose, 2013), we aim to analyse how government funding and cooperation influence on R&D activities and innovation of firms in Norway. Following arguments of Solesvik (2017), there is a need to shift towards development of new generation of innovation models, specifically quadruple-helix. For these purposes, we analyse the influence of governmental funding on firms´ product and process innovation and on R&D activities. Moreover, taking into account the fact that previous research focused primarily on the issue of triple-helix cooperation in Norway (for example Strand et al., 2017; Larsen et al., 2018), we consider the influence of cooperation based on both the triple-helix and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation. Therefore, this research contribute to the current state of the knowledge on the influence of cooperation based on the triple- and quadruple-helix principles on firms´ R&D and product and process innovation in the case of Norway, whereas we are considering the mediating role of research and development activities. In addition, this research also provide several practical implications.”

From the literature review in Section 2.1, it is not clear whether the study focusses on SMEs or on all firms, as the first sentence in this section mentions small businesses.

Re: Thank you very much for alert. Our study emphases on all firms. Above part were modified.  

Also in Section 2.1 it is not clear what is meant by innovation in Hypothesis 2. Innovation can be measured as product or process innovations (also marketing and organizations), it can also be measured by patent application, innovative sales, etc.

Re: Thank you very much for comment. We have already improved our structure of the work. In this content, Innovation means product and process innovation of all firms in Norway. We hope that the structure will be more clear for now.

 

What is meant by “cooperation based on the triple-helix principles” in Hypotheses 5 and 6?

Re: Thank you very much for remark. “Cooperation based on the triple-helix principles” implies triple helix cooperation. If the hypotheses are not clear, we can reformulate it.

Why are only 100 firm in the CIS survey in Norway? Please comment on a small number of firms given that the CIS is usually a large-scale survey.

Re: Thank you very much for your comment. We extended our research and focused on 5,045 firms.

How is the endogeneity of public support addressed, which is a well-known issue in the evaluation of innovation public support (see e.g. Aerts and Schmidt, 2008; Clausen, 2009; Dimos and Pugh, 2016, among some of the references included in the study)?

Re: Thank you very much for reminding. We tested whether our results are not biased. We tested different numbers of subgroups of data (segments) to identify unobserved heterogeneity (in total, 1 to 5 segments). The results confirmed one-segment solution. The Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and its modified version using Factor 3 (AIC3) were also considered.

In Table 1, it is not clear if the dependent and independent variables are binary (dummy), categorical or continuous.

Re: Thank you for your warning, we have already created new table and explained about the variable again. We also included information about variables.

NFI values in Table 3 is not explained in the text.

Re: Thanks for the alert. We have added the explanation of NFI in the text. “NFI which exceeds 0.90 is acceptable (Byrne, 1994) and is indicative of good fitting models.”

It is not clear what the saturated and estimated models are (Table 3).

Re: Thank you very much. We have mentioned the working function of these two models.

“The Saturated model measures relationship between all constructs, whereas the estimated model accesses a total effect of the system.”

Dear reviewer let us thank you once again for your time and willingness to help us improve our paper.

Kind regards,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Many thanks for delivering an improved version of your paper and considering the comments provided.

As a final improvement effort I would like the authors to read once more the paper and correct small errors and spelling deficiencies. Please delete the sources in the tables.

I put to your consideration "technological innovation" rather than product and process, it seems more straightforward.

Perhaps table 10 should be named "validation", it is more common in empirical works.

If possible, based on the outcomes of your hypotheses some policy recommendations could be designed in your last section as an outcome of your work.

All the best

 

Author Response

List of responses to the comments – Reviewer 1

Dear reviewer, we would like to thank you for your help to improve our article.

Many thanks for delivering an improved version of your paper and considering the comments provided.

As a final improvement effort I would like the authors to read once more the paper and correct small errors and spelling deficiencies. Please delete the sources in the tables.

Re: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We made a proofreading of our article. Moreover, we deleted the sources.

I put to your consideration "technological innovation" rather than product and process, it seems more straightforward.

Re: Thank you very much for this comment. We considered it, however, we will keep product and process innovation. The change would require additional changes in the article (theory). However, it is great inspiration for the future research. Thank you.

Perhaps table 10 should be named "validation", it is more common in empirical works.

Re: Thank you very much, we have changed the title of the table.

If possible, based on the outcomes of your hypotheses some policy recommendations could be designed in your last section as an outcome of your work.

Re: We do express our gratitude for your recommendation. We developed additional policy recommendation in the paper. Please see as follows:

“Finally, we set additional policy recommendations as follows. Government should emphasize the role of innovation to foster sustainable economy and should increase public funding for supporting R&D activities because national R&D investment’s level in Norway is lower than other Nordic countries. Concurrently, the government should set the clear mission of funding in order to encourage firms to conduct R&D activities very actively. Moreover, government should set targeted policies that can drive firms to technological change and the policies that can improve their technical capabilities. Apart from that, government should focus on the policies in the development of infrastructure and commercial platforms, increasing the quality of workforce and creating well-established business environment for firms.”

Dear reviewer, thank you very much!

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed my comments at a satisfactory level. 

Author Response

List of responses to the comments – Reviewer 3

The authors have addressed my comments at a satisfactory level. 

Re: Dear reviewer, we would like to thank you for your time and help to improve our article.

Best wishes,

Authors

Author Response File: Author Response.docx