ABSTRACT

Identifying Innovation, Innovators and Innovative Behaviours:
A Critical Assessment of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS)

CRIC Discussion Paper No. 48

Dr Bruce Tether

This paper provides a critical assessment of the European Community Innovation Survey (CIS) in relation to the identification of innovation, and by extension of innovators and innovative behaviours. With innovation widely recognised as being central to competitiveness and economic growth, the CIS is an important instrument for understanding innovation and for benchmarking innovation performance between sectors and countries. The inclusion of services in the survey is particularly welcome, as little is known about innovation behaviour in services. However, that the CIS has some significant flaws, which mean the data generated should be treated with considerably more caution than has hitherto been the case. In particular, the CIS effectively conflates a wide range of activities - from technology adoption through to 'true innovation' - into a single definition of innovation. This obscures important differences in behaviour between very different types of 'innovators'. The UK response to the second CIS is used to provide an empirical grounding to these arguments. The aim of the paper is not to denigrate the CIS - the survey certainly adds to our understanding of innovation - but instead aims to provide constructive criticisms so that it can be developed to provide more useful information in the future.

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