National innovative capacity, a central driver of countries’ long-term economic growth, has been one of the focal points in innovation research for roughly thirty years. Initially proposed as an index to measure technologic invention over time, this concept has become the widely accepted standard for measuring the performance of (sub) national and sectoral innovation systems toward being an analytic tool attributed to innovation systems theory. Country comparison, knowledge flows, and R&D forecasting are in the center of analysis feeding the concrete practical use of innovation policy optimization. In this regard, a rich body of studies has contributed indispensable knowledge about the determinants of innovative capacity. However, the multi-dimensional interconnections have not been covered in depth. Thus, to gain a holistic understanding of the “DNA” behind national innovative capacity a new “comparative” view of these determinants is necessary. To this end, this dissertation proposes revisiting the focus, unit and parameters of analysis that predominate within current national innovative capacity studies and sets forth three interlinked academic articles that focus on different layers of innovative capacity in countries. Besides furthering academic discourse on the determinants of innovational outcome, this conceptual revision leads to a new approach on national innovation capacity research. Its intention is to make policy makers aware of certain pathways leading to the same outcome. This knowledge will enable them to pursue a dynamic approach of supporting the innovative processes in countries by defining appropriate innovation strategies that consider both the countries’ specific preconditions and the sub-systems perspective.:1. Introduction 2. The purpose of revisiting the NIC concept for innovation policy 3. The scientific contribution of this doctoral thesis 3.1 Article 1: Increasing the national innovative capacity: Identifying the pathways to success using a comparative method 3.2 Article 2: National Health Innovation Systems: Clustering the OECD countries by innovative output in healthcare using a multi-indicator approach 3.3 Article 3: Increasing the innovative capacity of European cities: Making use of proven concepts from the national level 4. References