Measuring the innovative activity of New Zealand firms
International comparisons suggest that, although the New Zealand public sector invests considerable resources into scientific research, New Zealand firms are not particularly effective at generating applied knowledge and even less so at turning it into commercial products. However, these findings are based on aggregate data and there is limited evidence on innovative activity at the firm level.
This paper provides an overview of measures that capture both the inputs into and outputs from the innovative activities of New Zealand firms, using data on firm-level innovation from 2005 to 2013 available from Statistics New Zealand’s Longitudinal Business Database. The paper finds that the various measures tell different stories about the pattern of innovative activity across New Zealand firms. Notably, R&D expenditure and intensity are only weakly correlated with, and display different patterns to, measures of innovative output. For example, different types of innovation output occur in firms that do not report any investment in R&D. Accordingly, to get a full picture of the innovative activity of New Zealand firms, it is necessary to use multiple measures to get a broader picture.
This working paper was produced under the Longitudinal Business Database Partnership, along with “The impact of R&D subsidy on innovation: A study of New Zealand firms” (Jaffe and Le), released by Motu Economics and Public Policy Research. This paper focuses on firms that have received R&D grants and found that receiving an R&D grant almost doubles the probability that a firm introduces a product or service that is new to the world. However, firms that received R&D grants were no more likely to introduce organisational or marketing innovations. Although R&D grants help drive one type of innovation, other, complementary activities are needed to increase innovation across the board.
Publications
Filter publications by topic.
1 May 2023
28 February 2023
28 February 2023
27 February 2023
27 February 2023
23 December 2022
21 December 2022
30 September 2022
29 September 2022
18 July 2022
9 June 2022
31 May 2022
28 May 2022
28 May 2022
1 April 2022
1 December 2021
14 November 2021
8 November 2021
8 November 2021
8 November 2021
8 November 2021
27 September 2021
1 September 2021
27 May 2021
21 April 2021
21 April 2021
20 April 2021
20 April 2021
1 April 2021
25 February 2021
4 December 2020
30 November 2020
4 September 2020
31 August 2020
30 June 2020
28 April 2020
18 March 2020
9 March 2020
19 February 2020
30 November 2019
16 October 2019
16 August 2019
7 June 2019
16 May 2019
14 February 2019
1 February 2019
1 February 2019
24 December 2018
14 November 2018
1 August 2018
20 March 2018
22 February 2018
23 November 2017
23 November 2017
1 November 2017
29 September 2017
1 June 2017
20 February 2017
16 December 2016
28 November 2016
27 April 2016
12 January 2016
1 December 2015
29 June 2015
29 May 2015
29 May 2015
5 February 2015
21 January 2015
5 June 2014
5 June 2014
1 March 2014
19 December 2013
20 September 2013
16 July 2013
