IP Outreach Research > IP Creation

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Main Findings

During the year ended 30 June 2007, innovation-active businesses (businesses that had undertaken at least one type of innovation during the reference period) in Australia represented 36.8% of all businesses. Larger firms were more likely to be innovation-active than smaller ones.

The most innovation-active sectors were information media and telecommunications (with 52% of businesses innovating during 2006-07), followed by manufacturing (50%). The least innovative sectors were transport, postal and warehousing (29%), and construction (27%).

Non innovation-active respondents were far more likely to report no barriers to innovation (62.8%) than innovating businesses (38.3%). The most common barriers to innovation cited were: lack of skilled persons (cited as a factor hampering innovation by 34.5% of innovation-active businesses, and by 20.5% of non innovation-active ones), lack of access to additional funds (24.5% versus 10.8%), and cost of development or introduction/implementation (17.5% versus 7%).

The main drivers of innovation were profit related (reported by 75.9% of innovation-active businesses), competition/demand/market related (76.9%) or production/delivery related (58%). Within these categories, increasing responsiveness to customer needs came in first (with 52.3%), followed by increasing/maintaining market share (44.9%), and improving quality of goods/services (37.4%).

The most commonly reported sources of ideas or information for innovative activities were “within the business or related company” (cited by 55.5% of innovators), followed by “clients/customers/buyers” (44.1%), “websites/journals/research papers/publications” (31.8%), and “suppliers” (31.7%).

[Date Added: Nov 20, 2008 ]