International Comparisons of Innovation Indicator Development

摘要

The project studied two surveys in West Germany and one in each of the countries of the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States. The surveys could be grouped into those that involved direct surveys of industrial firms, and those that collected data focused more on the innovative output of the first than on the innovation inputs. Although the surveys were quite different, both were found to be useful. The innovation-based surveys provide information that can be used as measures of innovative output, and data from such surveys are amenable to the development of longitudinal studies and analyses of the inter-industry technology flows. The firm-based data provide information concerning intermediate stages in the innovation process. The following frequently-asked questions and topics are addressed by the surveys: sources of innovation; innovation counts; percentage of sales from previous years attributable to new products; expenditures on innovation activities downstream from research; the objectives of innovation; obstacles to innovation; the organization of research; the users of new technology; the significance of innovation; and the length of time required to develop innovations.