The Community Innovation Surveys (CIS) are a series of
surveysStatistical surveys are used to collect quantitative information about items in a population. Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research. A survey may focus on opinions or factual information depending...
executed by national
statisticalStatistics is a branch of mathematics concerned with collecting and interpreting data. According to other definitions, it is a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. Statisticians improve the quality of data with the...
offices throughout the
European UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 Member States, located primarily in Europe. Committed to regional integration, the EU was established by the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing European Economic Community...
and in Norway and Iceland. The harmonized surveys are designed to give information on the
innovativityAn innovation is a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter , contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an...
of different sectors and regions. Data from these surveys is used for the annual
European Innovation ScoreboardThe European Innovation Scoreboard is the instrument developed at the initiative of the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to provide a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU Member States...
and for academic research on innovation, with over 200 papers using the CIS data published.
Surveys
In the 1980s, a series of individual surveys on innovation was carried out. Thereupon, the member states of the European Union decided to coordinate their efforts, and they laid down a common methodological approach to innovation research in the
Oslo ManualThe Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development's document "The Measurement of Scientific and Technological Activities, Proposed Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Technological Innovation Data", also known as the Oslo Manual, contains guidelines for collecting and using data on...
.
As of 2009, five CIS surveys have been carried out:
- CIS1, 1992
- CIS2, 1996
- CIS3, 2001
- CIS4, 2004
CIS 2006
CIS 2008 is currently in the field, while planning is underway for CIS 2010.
CIS1 experienced some difficulties, partly because no standards existed yet, and partly because of a rather limited time-frame.. However, it already made a first attempt at homogenization, and at comparability with non-EU surveys. In that sense it was an important step towards CIS2, even though both surveys turned out to mark a rather large number of firms as 'innovative' due to their generous definitions. The more recent surveys paid more attention to
service innovationBusiness Week, March 29, 2007, stated that Service Innovation is "The Next Big Thing". The story, discussing the not-for-profit consortium called the , is one of many in academic, business and management journals and magazines discussing the challenge to conventional thinking about innovation that...
s, and future surveys will also include
managementManagement in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading, directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization or effort for...
techniques, organisational change, design and marketing issues.
Methodology
National statistical offices carry out the survey according to the EU-wide definitions of the Oslo Manual. They generally take a sample from all establishments, stratifying the sample by sector, establishment size and possibly region. For the size classes, a portion of all establishments below a certain size threshold is selected, but in most countries all large establishments receive a questionnaire. The survey is conducted at the enterprise level. Firms that organise their business activities into separate legally defined units can therefore be sampled several times.
The resulting microdatasets can be accessed by researchers in some countries.
EurostatEurostat is a Directorate-General of the European Commission located in Luxembourg. Its main responsibilities are to provide the European Union with statistical information at European level and to promote the harmonisation of statistical methods across the Member States of the European Union,...
also provides access to the EU-wide dataset for selected countries. Some non-EU countries perform very similar surveys according to the same methodology. These include Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
External links