New insights into business innovation

Almost half of New Zealand businesses were innovative during 2008 and 2009, Statistics New Zealand said today. A report just released – Innovation in New Zealand: 2009 – gives the most comprehensive survey results available on the innovation activities of New Zealand businesses.

These results come from Statistics New Zealand’s 2009 Business Operations Survey, which collects information on innovation and a wide range of other practices from business in all industries with six or more employees.

Innovation in New Zealand: 2009:

• includes new results for ‘new-to-market’ product innovations
• gives more detailed comparisons between the innovation rates of New Zealand and Australian businesses than the 2007 report
• shows how types and levels of innovation activity change over time
• contains information on all aspects of business innovation. 

Results indicate that business innovators performed better than non-innovators against a range of perceived performance measures.

The top two reasons for businesses to innovate were to improve their revenue (90 percent of innovators) and increase productivity (78 percent of innovators).

For types and levels of innovation activity, results show little or no change since the last time the information was collected in 2007.

Innovation embraces a wide range of activities associated with new or improved products, processes, or marketing methods. Statistics NZ collects detailed information on innovation and on research and development in alternate years. More information and results are available from www.stats.govt.nz.

Geoff Bascand 30 June 2010

Government Statistician