This paper presents an integrated set of innovation taxonomies for firms and sectors. It discards the practice of representing
industries by some average behaviour, instead characterising them by the distribution of diverse innovation modes at the firm
level. The theoretical focus is on (i) Schumpeter's distinction between "creative" and "adaptive response", and (ii) differences
regarding technological opportunities, appropriability conditions and the cumulativeness of knowledge. Applying statistical
cluster analysis, the empirical identification is based on the micro-data of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) for 22
European countries. The final cluster validation highlights the simultaneous diversity and contingency of firm behaviour with
distinct technological regimes exhibiting systematic differences in the distribution of heterogeneous firms.
Keywords:Technological regimes, innovation modes, sectoral taxonomy, industry classification, cluster analysis
Forschungsbereich:Industrie-, Innovations- und internationale Ökonomie