Analyzing the configuration of the National Innovation System for Innovation Capability: evidence from Global Innovation Index reports

National innovation capability (NIC) is an important manifestation of economic development quality and international competitiveness. Previous studies focus mainly on the static impact of factors in the national innovation system on NIC in a given year. Research is still lacking on whether these factors have continuing, stable impacts on NIC in different economies. To fill this literature gap, this study uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct cross-economy and cross-year comparisons and discusses how the five elements of the NIS jointly affected the NIC of different economies from 2011 to 2022. The results indicate that the necessity consistency of infrastructure for NIC shows a temporal trend. There are four paths to generating high NIC in high-income economies, but only two such paths for upper middle-income economies. The path combining human capital and research, market sophistication, and business sophistication can drive both types of economies to generate high NIC. The research results have improved the transparency of innovation paths and provided a reference for different economies to achieve sustainable development.