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Measuring Innovation

A New Perspective

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Measuring Innovation: A New Perspective presents new measures and new ways of looking at traditional indicators. It builds on 50 years of indicator development by OECD and goes beyond R&D to describe the broader context in which innovation occurs. It includes some experimental indicators that provide insight into new areas of policy interest. It highlights measurement gaps and proposes directions for advancing the measurement agenda.

This publication begins by describing innovation today. It looks at what is driving innovation in firms, and how the scientific and research landscape is being reconfigured by convergence, interdisciplinarity and the new geography of innovation hot spots. It presents broader measures of innovation, for example using new indicators of investment in intangible assets and trademarks. 

Human capital is the basic input of innovation, and a series of indicators looks at how well education systems are contributing to the knowledge and research bases. Further series examine how firms transform skills and knowledge, and shed light on the different roles of public and private investment in fostering innovation and reaping its rewards, with concrete examples from major global challenges such as health and climate change.

Measuring Innovation is a major step towards evidence-based innovation policy making. It complements traditional “positioning”-type indicators with ones that show how innovation is, or could be, linked to policy.  It also recognises that much more remains to be done, and points to the  measurement challenges statisticians, researchers and policy makers alike need to address.

English Also available in: Spanish, French

Collaboration in innovation

New firm-level analysis reveals that firms that collaborate on innovation spend more on innovation than those that do not. This suggests that collaboration is likely to be undertaken to extend the scope of a project or to complement firms’ competencies more than to save on costs. In most countries collaboration with foreign partners is as least as important as domestic co-operation. Collaboration is used in innovation processes whether firms perform a lot of R&D, a little R&D or no R&D at all. In this respect, policies that stimulate collaboration and network initiatives will have an impact on the entire spectrum of innovative firms.

English Also available in: French

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