Award Winner 2023
Bild: Anna Logue
Mannheimer Innovationspanel of the ZEW
Motivation
For the creation of a world-leading data infrastructure for empirical innovation research
On 23. June 2023, the School of Business and Economics at the University of Wuppertal awarded the Schumpeter School Award to the Mannheim Innovation Panel of the ZEW.
The Mannheim Innovation Panel (MIP) is one of the most important scientific data sources for innovation research in Germany and is one of the leading institutions of its kind worldwide. For 30 years now, data has been collected annually at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) from more than 10,000 industrial enterprises and business-related service providers. The surveys focus on the implementation of product and process innovations, the level of research and development expenditure as well as political and economic factors influencing innovation. The data of the MIP, which is funded by the BMBF, are both the basis for evidence-based policy advice to strengthen the innovative power of the German economy and the basis for innovative economic research. Designed as a panel survey, the same companies are interviewed annually so that processes of change in innovation behaviour can be traced and studied.
The collection of data is at the beginning of every empirical research, and empirical research depends on access to data. The importance of the Mannheim Innovation Panel for research results not least from the fact that the data are not only analysed at the ZEW, but are also made available to external users in anonymised form for scientific, non-commercial purposes. As a data infrastructure, the MIP is a public asset for basic research that has so far provided more than 600 researchers - including former winners of the Schumpeter School Prize - with a wide range of insights into the innovation activities of companies. About 300 scientific articles have been published in peer-reviewed journals so far, including high-ranking journals such as Research Policy, RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics or Journal of Applied Econometrics. In addition, there are countless working papers and indicator reports that depict innovation activity in Germany for a broader public.
