Does tertiary education promote technological innovation sustainability? The role of national intellectual capital. An empirical evidence

Tertiary education redefines its role in research and innovation, acting as a proponent of the research and innovation culture, creating real-world solutions, and bridging the gap between decision-making, governance, and innovation. We empirically explore tertiary education’s effect on innovation and national intellectual capital’s role. The empirical findings of the 2SLS and instrumental variable fixed effect model with Driscoll-Kraay robust standard errors, based on panel evidence from 79 economies from 1995 to 2017, show that tertiary education has a positive and substantial effect on innovation performance as determined by patent and trademark applications. Comparable results are obtained using instrumental variable panel quantile regression as robustness tests to support the findings. Also, theoretically, the result shows that national intellectual capital reinforces the impact of tertiary education as a catalyst for technological progress. The findings support R&D data policies that support specific digital innovation, skills, knowledge creation, and diffusion. Proactive policy frameworks should be adopted to promote national intellectual capital through internet infrastructure for economic inclusion that fosters innovativeness; tertiary education using digital technology redefines creativity, stimulates cooperation, and aids in forming innovative ecosystems; boosting government and private grants to university academics allows for identifying ideas with the greatest long-term potential.