The Business Operations Survey was designed to collect data in accordance with the following definitions and terminology:
ANZSIC
Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification System – New Zealand Version 1996.
Business Frame
A register of all businesses operating in New Zealand.
Employees
The number of employees is defined by an enterprise's rolling mean employment (RME) count. RME is a 12-month moving average of the monthly employment count (EC) figure. The EC is obtained from taxation data.
Enterprise
A business or service entity operating in New Zealand. It can be a company, partnership, trust, estate, incorporated society, producer board, local or central government organisation, voluntary organisation, or self-employed individual.
Goods and services tax (GST)
Respondents are asked to exclude GST if possible in the financial figures provided in the questionnaire. If they did not, Statistics NZ takes out GST to make all enterprises comparable.
Last financial year
For the purpose of this survey, this refers to the last financial year for which the business had results available, as at August 2009, as entered on the questionnaire.
Innovation definitions
The innovation module of the survey is designed to collect innovation data in accordance with the definitions contained in the Oslo Manual: Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data (2005). The manual is available from www.oecd.org. The following definitions relate specifically to the innovation module.
Innovation
For this survey, innovation is broadly defined. It includes the development or introduction of any new or significantly improved activity for the business. This includes products, processes, and methods that the business was the first to develop and those that have been adopted from other organisations.
For the Business Operations Survey 2009, an innovation is defined as the development or introduction of new or significantly improved:
- goods or services – this does not include the selling of new goods or services wholly produced and developed by other businesses
- operational processes – that is, methods of producing or distributing goods or services
- organisational/managerial processes – that is, significant changes in the business’s strategies, structures, or routines
- marketing methods – this includes sales and marketing methods intended to increase the appeal of goods or services for specific market segments, or to gain entry to new markets.
Cooperative arrangement
A cooperative arrangement is active participation with another organisation or individual in activities for the purposes of innovation. This includes collaborative arrangements for the purposes of innovation. Each party should bring exclusive knowledge or expertise to the cooperation. Partners do not necessarily gain immediate commercial benefit from the cooperation. A cooperative arrangement does not include only contracting-out work, where there is no active cooperation.