Environment and innovation: The case of the small entity

Scholarship on innovation has an extensive history, including research on national technological output national systems to generate innovation, and the firm-level management of new product planning and development. This piece unites these strands, opening discussion on how national innovation systems affect management behavior, resulting in differences in the output of new technologies. By concentrating on one idiosyncracy of the United States, the disproportionate participation by small entity innovators, and one piece of its innovation environment, the patent system, the study is able to bring together the macro and micro evidence and analysis. Because national innovation systems, by definition, vary by country, there are important implications for managing the R&D process for optimal new products according to environmental circumstances. (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1996