4.1 Business Spend on Innovation including R&D

 Data on innovation are taken from the second Community Innovation Survey (CIS) with reference years 1994-96.  This provides data on the innovation activities of enterprises employing more than ten people across most EU and some EEA countries.  The results are currently for Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Sweden, UK and Norway.  The survey covers all manufacturing industries, utilities, transport and distribution services, telecommunications, and financial, computing and engineering services.

 International comparisons using the CIS should be treated with caution.  While the survey is designed to be consistent across countries, it is not clear that questions have always been interpreted consistently across Member States.  Moreover some countries have low response rates that will undermine the reliability of the sample.

 4.2 UK's patenting performance

 Data for patents granted in the US come from the US Patent and Trade Mark Office.  Data for EU patent applications are provided by the European Patent Office.

 4.3 Proportion of firms that innovate

 The second CIS classified an enterprise as an innovator if it had introduced new or improved products or processes between 1994 and 1996.

 4.4 Share of sales from new or improved products

 The CIS recorded, for manufacturing enterprises only, the percentage of total turnover in 1996 due to new and improved products introduced during the previous three years.

 4.5 University licensing, spinouts and start-ups

 The data on spinouts are taken from Higher Education Funding Council for England’s report Industry Academic links in the UK, prepared for the Office of Science and Technology.

 4.6 Sources of information for innovation

 Data are taken from the second CIS.  The survey asked enterprises to grade the importance of a number of sources of information for new technological innovation projects or for the completion of existing projects.

 4.7 Joint publication by universities and industry

 The data is taken from SPRU, UK Corporate Research and Collaboration.

 4.8 Internationalisation of R&D

 Data are taken from OECD's Activity of Foreign Affiliates Database.  The geographical origin of a foreign affiliate is the country of the parent company if it holds over 50 per cent of the affiliate's voting shares.

 4.9 Technological alliances between firms

 The source of the data is the Maastricht Economic research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) based at the University of Maastricht. Alliances can take a variety of forms, ranging from simple partnerships (cross licensing) to the establishment of common research subsidiaries.

 4.10 Entry and exit rates

 Start-up rates are taken from the Global Enterprise Monitor (GEM), 2000.  GEM was created in 1997 as a joint research project initiative by Babson College and London Business School with support from the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.  This is a cross-national comparison of the role and impact of entrepreneurship in national economic growth.  Ten countries participated  in the 1999 exercise: the G7 plus Denmark, Finland and Israel.  GEM 2000 added 11 countries from across Europe, Asia and South America.  Data were assembled from three principal sources: population surveys; in depth interviews of national experts; and standardised national data.

 Data on registration times and start up costs are taken from the European Commission document Benchmarking Enterprise Policy - First results from the Scoreboard.  These data were themselves taken from the Logotech study commissioned by the European Commission, International Comparison of the Formal Requirements and Administrative Procedures Required for the Formation of SME's of any legal status in EU and Other major countries, Logotech, 1997.

 4.11 Fast growing firms

 Data on the percentage of businesses which have doubled their sales growth in the past five years are taken from the Merrill Lynch study Benchmarking the New Economy: Europe in the Global Context, August 2000.

 4.12 Attitudes to risk taking

 Data on entrepreneurial attitudes are taken from the GEM 1999 full report.

Last updated on 07 August 2002