Description:
This data set contains the responses of South African business enterprises on their innovation activities carried out between 2010 and 2012. In completing the questionnaire, enterprises followed a skip pattern, e.g., depending on whether or not they had carried out product or process innovation during the period covered by the survey.
Abstract:
Innovation Surveys are currently designed to measure the extent of innovative activity in the industry and service sectors of the economy and are based on the guidelines of the OECD/Eurostat Oslo Manual and the core EU Community Innovation Survey (CIS) but are usually adapted by countries to meet particular country needs or conditions.
Innovation Surveys are a source of data for developing policies to enhance innovation. The South African Innovation Survey follows the international OECD/Eurostat guidelines and methodology and is based on the core CIS with modifications and a few particular questions for the South African environment. Following international methodology allows the results of the South African Innovation Survey to be usefully compared with the results from other countries. The National innovation survey 2010 - 2012 collected primary data from the business sector.
Although some general organisational information was collected, the survey focused on product and process innovation.
Some of the indicators collected included the following:
Share of firms that introduced a product innovation
Share of firms that introduced a process innovation
Share of firms that introduced a new-to-market product innovation
Sources of information for innovation
Total expenditures on innovation [as a % of total turnover]
Factors hampering innovation in firms
Share of (innovation active) firms that co-operated with foreign partners on innovation
Share of (innovation active) firms that received public financial support for innovation
A special section on firms that had innovation activity with environmental benefits
Innovation Surveys are based on a random stratified sample of business enterprises from the national business register (or equivalent) and results are extrapolated to the original population. The South African Business Innovation Survey 2010 -2012 was based on a random stratified sample of 6 000 enterprises obtained from the Statistics South Africa business register. After cleaning the remaining entries in the database totaled 5850 valid enterprises and after two postal rounds and telephonic and e-mail follow ups and reminders a final response of 746 completed questionnaires was obtained giving an response rate of 16.0%.
The key users of the data and findings include government departments, especially the DST and the OECD.
Ad hoc requests for data are also accommodated and inform academic papers, reports and outputs.
Email survey
Face-to-face interview
Postal survey
Self-completion
Telephone interview
By Standard Industrial Code (SIC) (see attached document with file name: INNOV 2010-2012 Universe SIC Business Innovation Survey Codes book).
Please see attached sampling frame and sample design from Stats SA (see attached documents with filenames: INNOV 2010-2012 Sample specifications for the South African Business Innovation Survey 2013 and INNOV 2010-2012 Final sample findings - Innovation Survey 2013).
Completed questionnaires (responses) = 746
Non-responses = 5 104
Out-of-scopes = 1 192
Response rate = 100 x (Responses/(Responses + Non-responses - Out-of-scopes)) = 100 x (746/(746 + 5104 - 1 192)) = 16.0%
Note: Please refer to the "INNOV 2010-2012 Limitations of data use" document when using the results.
