The impact of industry associations: Evidence from Statistics Canada data

SummaryIndustry associations are nonprofit organizations with specialized knowledge and capabilities that typically perform innovation enabler roles. I present Statistics Canada data that show that industry associations have a strong impact on the ability of Canadian firms to innovate. In the interests of informing further empirical work on the contributions of organizations that work to enable innovation, I develop theory to describe how organizations that perform innovation enabler roles are expected to contribute to the ability of firms to innovate. I also describe how the measurement guidelines of the Frascati and Oslo Manuals published by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development make it difficult to observe the existence and impact of nonprofit organizations that perform innovation enabler roles.