Effectiveness of the national innovation system: The case of Turkey

Innovation is the main factor in determining the development level of countries and the welfare level of societies. In order to close the technology gap between developed and developing countries, a more systematic approach to innovation was needed, which is basically expressed as the national innovation system. Therefore, an effective national innovation system is of great importance for developing countries to reach the level of developed countries. From this point of view, in this thesis, the efficiency of the national innovation system of Turkey, which is a developing country, was examined by using the values in the years 2014-2021 with twelve main variables and sub-components in the European Innovation Scoreboard. In the analysis, the eight-year averages of each variable were taken and Turkey's values were compared with the European Union (EU) average. As a result of the comparison of the examined variables with the EU, it was determined which variables were far or close to the EU average, and the areas where the Turkish national innovation system worked relatively well and where it was insufficient were determined. The findings obtained indicate that the efficiency in the field of intellectual assets, human resources, attractive research system and information technologies is low but the efficiency in the area of firm innovation outputs is very well. In line with this result, it is recommended to reform in higher-education in order to develop an effective national innovation system in Turkey and to develop an ecosystem in which innovation activities such as R&D, venture capital, radical innovation, knowledge-intensive activities and patents are supported.