Innovation in New Zealand: 2009 presents results from the 2007 and 2009 Business Operations Survey. Many of the results are similar for the two years, which suggests the overall patterns of innovation activities have not changed. The report also presents some new results from the survey. The following points summarise some of the key results.
Rate of innovation
- In 2009, 46 percent of businesses reported innovation activity.
- 41 percent of businesses had implemented innovations, and 5 percent had ongoing or abandoned innovations.
- The industry with the highest innovation rate was information media and telecommunication services with 60 percent.
International comparisons
- New Zealand’s innovation rate is similar to, but lower than Australia’s.
Innovation rate characteristics
- Each of the four types of innovation – product, process, marketing, or organisational – had rates of around 25 percent.
- Almost 60 percent of innovating businesses develop their own innovations.
Sources of ideas and information
- ‘Existing staff’ was the highest ranked source of ideas and information for innovation – 74 percent of innovating businesses used this source.
Innovation and business performance
- Innovators performed better than non-innovators against a range of reported business performance measures.
- 39 percent of product innovators reported more than 10 percent of sales came from new or improved products.
Reasons for innovation
- ‘To increase revenue’ was the most common reason for innovation – 90 percent of all innovating firms reported this reason.
- 39 percent of businesses that implemented a process innovation did so because of the introduction of new goods or services.
Product development expenditure
- Businesses spent $2.5 billion on product development activities (0.5 percent of total expenditure).
- The telecommunications industry had the highest average spend per business ($830,000).
- 55 percent of businesses who invested in innovation spent more than $1,000 per employee.
Innovation and other activities
- Because innovation encompasses a wide range of activities, including research and development (R&D), business innovation rates are much higher than R&D rates.
- 22 percent of innovating businesses acquired computer hardware and software to support innovation.
- The most common way that businesses protected their intellectual property was with confidentiality agreements (used by 29 percent of businesses).
Cooperation for innovation
- 15 percent of innovating businesses had cooperative arrangements with their suppliers for the purpose of innovation.
- 44 percent of innovating businesses with cooperative arrangements stated ‘accessing new markets’ as a reason to cooperate for innovation.
Factors hampering innovation
- 19 percent of businesses saw the ‘cost to develop and introduce innovations’ as hampering innovation to a high degree.
- Of the factors that did not hamper business innovation, access to intellectual property rights was the most common (82 percent).
Product innovation
- Half of all businesses who introduced product innovations had new-to-New Zealand innovations.
- 19 percent of businesses who introduced product innovations had new-to-the-world innovations.