“…R&D, thus, is considered a main source of technical and knowledge changes that creates new knowledge or technology and new goods or processes (OCED, 2001). As a result, researchers have considered R&D as the sole candidate to be a proxy for innovation efforts (Acs & Audretsch, 1988;Crépon et al, 1998;, 2002Becheikh, Landry, & Amara, 2006;Griffith, Huergo, Mairesse, & Peters, 2006;Amara, Landry, Becheikh, & Ouimet, 2008;Roper, Du, & Love, 2008;Freeman & Soete, 2009;Hall, Lotti, & Mairesse, 2009;Marin, 2014;Baumann & Kritikos, 2016;Garcia-Pozo, Marchante-Mera, & Campos-Soria, 2018). However, some studies have failed to find a positive link between innovation inputs and outputs (e.g.…”