Innovation is critical to boosting economic growth and combating social problems. Based on national innovation systems, this study investigates how combinations of multiple factors (i.e., R&D investment, human capital, social freedom, democracy, globalization, and country affluence) lead to high national innovation performance. This study adopts fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore multiple conjunctural causations of innovation performance using a multi-source dataset of 116 countries. It identifies two configurations for high innovation performance: leveraging human capital and leveraging R&D investment. It also adopts a necessary condition analysis (NCA) to examine the necessary relationships between every condition and the outcome. NCA finds that R&D investment, globalization, and country affluence are necessary conditions for innovation performance, although they have different degrees of importance. This study advances the knowledge on national innovation performance and demonstrates how NCA can add complementary insights to the findings of fsQCA.

创新对于促进经济增长和解决社会问题至关重要。基于国家创新体系，本研究调查了多种因素（即研发投资、人力资本、社会自由、民主、全球化和国家富裕程度）的组合如何导致高国家创新绩效。本研究采用模糊集定性比较分析 (fsQCA)，使用 116 个国家的多源数据集探索创新绩效的多重关联原因。它确定了高创新绩效的两种配置：利用人力资本和利用研发投资。它还采用必要条件分析（NCA）来检查每个条件与结果之间的必要关系。NCA 发现研发投资、全球化、和国家富裕程度是创新绩效的必要条件，尽管它们具有不同程度的重要性。本研究推进了有关国家创新绩效的知识，并展示了 NCA 如何为 fsQCA 的发现添加补充见解。