This paper disentangles the actions that firms took to mitigate financial and nonfinancial innovation barriers and offers a first assessment of the role of government support programs for innovation related activities in relation with these perceived innovation obstacles. Our results show that firms that face financial constraints cannot completely overcome these innovation barriers. When not financially constrained however, firms that choose to be undeterred by the obstacles they face and takes successful measures or use government programs are either equally or more innovative than firms that do not face such innovation obstacles. Firms that have used government assistance programs have a greater propensity to innovate then those that did not use any government support.