The measurement and assessment of national innovation system has centered on 4 types of knowledge of information flows
1) Interactions among entreprises, primarily joint research activities and other technical collaborations;
2) Interactions among entreprises universities and public research institutes, including joint research, co-patenting, co-publication and more informal linkages;
3) Diffusion of knowledge and technology to entreprises, including industry adoption rates for new technologies and diffusion through machinery and equipment;
4) Personnel mobility, focusing on the movement if technical personnel within and between the public and private sectors.
Attempts to link these flows to firm performance show that high levels of technical collabpration, technology diffusion and personnel mobility contribute to the inproved innovative capacity of entreprises in terms of products, patents, and productivity.
The concept of NIS rest on the premise that understanding the linkages among the actors involved in innovation is key to improving technology performance. Innovation and technical progress are the result of a complex set of relationship among actors producing, distributing and applying various kinds of knowledge. The innovative performance of a country depends to a large extent on how the actors relates to each other as elements of a collective system of knowledge creation and use as well as the technology they use. These actors are primarily private entreprises, universities and public research institutes and the people within them. The linkages can take the form of joint research, personnel exchanges, cross-patenting, purchase of equipment and a variety of other channels. There is no single accepted definition of a national system of innovation.
