30 August 2008
Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS)
 
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The Community Innovation Survey

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) is a survey conducted every 4 years by EU member states that allows the monitoring of Europe’s progress in the area of innovation. The UK Innovation Survey 2005, the fourth Europe-wide CIS, is the largest so far conducted, sent to 28,000 UK enterprises with 10 or more employees and achieving a 58 per cent response rate. It provides the UK data covering the three-year period from 2002 to 2004.

The DTI recently organised a launch event to present key findings from the Occasional Paper No. 6: 'Innovation in the UK - Indicators and Insights'. Additionally, Professor Peter Swann and Dr Bruce Tether presented results from their research based on CIS4 data. It also included presentations by Tony McBride for the CBI and Bettina Peters for the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) who conducted the CIS for Germany.

Business innovation is a vital ingredient in raising the productivity, competitiveness and growth potential of modern economies. Providing the right economic conditions for, and using appropriate policy instruments to encourage innovation in the UK is a central objective for the DTI. Measuring the level of innovation activity in the UK and identifying where policy might be best targeted contributes to the pursuit of that objective. The Community Innovation Survey complements other indicators of innovativeness by providing a regular snapshot of innovation inputs and outputs and the constraints faced by UK businesses in their innovation efforts, across the range of UK industries and business enterprises. It has the additional benefit of providing the basis for some comparisons with other European countries.

The survey includes sections on factors that hamper innovation, the impact of innovation on the business and the sources of information used. It also touches on aspects of the wider innovation process, such as the introduction of new management techniques.

The previous Community Innovation Surveys, CIS 3, took place in 2001, and CIS 2 in 1997. Analyses of the results of these surveys can be found below:

 Paper
 No.		 Subject Publication
 Date
 14bInnovation in the UK - DTI Occasional Paper 6 - statistical annex Aug 2006
 14a  Innovation in the UK: indicators and insights. Occasional Paper No. 6 Jul 2006
 13First findings from the UK Innovation survey 2005

 Mar 2006

 12  International Comparisons of the Third Community Innovation Survey Jan 2005
 11  Detailed results from the Third UK Community Innovation Survey Apr 2004
 10  The Impact of Technological Regimes on patterns of sustained and sporadic innovation activities in UK Industries Mar 2004
 9  Sourcing science - use by industry of the science base for innovation; Evidence from the UK's Innovation Survey Aug 2003
 8  Industrial Breakdown of the UK Innovation Survey 2001 Mar 2003
 7  Regional Innovation Performance in the UK Dec 2002
 6  Innovative businesses and the science and technology base - an analysis using CIS 3 data Nov 2002
 5  Regional Breakdown of the UK Innovation Survey 2001 Aug 2002
 4  UK Innovation survey 2001 (CIS3) Results Aug 2002
 3  Comparison of the 2nd and 3rd Community Innovation Surveys Aug 2002
 2UK Innovation Performance: Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats and Main Problems Jan 2001
 1  UK Results from the 2nd Community Innovation Survey Oct 1998

The CIS3 Questionnaire is available in pdf format from the following link:

CIS3 Questionnaire

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