Principles that guide innovation: predicting the Global Innovation Index score with dimensions of human values

Abstract

It is, perhaps, a truism that there is value in innovation. This belief is the reason so many governments and private businesses encourage and, more critically, support invention and the marketing of those inventions. However, it is also likely true that there is value behind innovation. More accurately, one could say that there are values driving the innovation process. This paper examines the human values that, at a national level, may be associated with greater innovation. We start with a brief overview of definitions of human values, and then discuss two models that have multinational data available. The theoretical links between these models and innovation are presented, then we go on to suggest hypotheses that can be derived from these links and from the relevant empirical work to date. These hypotheses are next tested with extant data sets. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings of those tests.