In 1986, it marked the renovation path, changing mechanisms and policies in all aspects, including Vietnam's economy. Since then, Vietnam's economy has grown rapidly with the contribution of the private sector, which was explained through Schumpeter's theory, and innovation was considered as the blood source for the nation's existence and development. The paper aims to explore the relationship between domestic innovation activities and economic development in Vietnam during 1988-2018. Data in the study were collected from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the World Bank (World Bank). This study used the Vector Autoregression Model (VAR) to analyze the relationship between domestic innovation activities and economic development. The research results show that Vietnam's domestic innovation activity is still limited, and has a twoway relationship between domestic innovation activities and economic development in Vietnam. Based on the research results, Vietnam needs to have an appropriate policy for economic development, especially focusing on renovating mechanisms and policies to create conditions for the private sector to strengthen its innovation to develop thereby contributing to Vietnam's economic development.