Results of the 2011 UIS pilot data collection of innovation statistics

The relationship between innovation and economic development is widely acknowledged. Innovation is a key element in the growth of output and productivity, and therefore crucial for poverty alleviation. While research and experimental development (R&D) plays a vital role in the innovation process, many of the related activities rely on highly-skilled workers, interactions with other firms and public research institutions, as well as an organizational structure that is conducive to learning and exploiting knowledge. These factors should be taken into account by policymakers. To this end, data are required to better understand innovation and its relation to economic growth, as well as to provide indicators for benchmarking national performance. Over the last few decades, work has been undertaken to establish analytical frameworks and guidelines for innovation studies. Efforts to standardize innovation definitions and indicators came to the forefront with the publication of the first version of the Oslo Manual (OM) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1992. The manual pushed the measurement of innovation as a process, fostering the collection of comparable innovation indicators since its first edition. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) is striving to increase the availability of timely, accurate and policy-relevant statistics in the field of science, technology and innovation (STI) through the development of a database of cross-nationally comparable innovation statistics. To this end, the UIS launched a pilot data collection of innovation statistics in 2011 in order to prepare for the global data collection which will be launched in 2013. The pilot data collection was based on the definitions of the third edition of the Oslo Manual, covering four types of innovation in the business sector. Data were collected for manufacturing, services and total economic activities covered by each national innovation survey. However, this repo