South African Business Innovation Survey (INNOV) 2014-16: All provinces

Description:
This data set contains the responses of South African business enterprises on their innovation activities carried out between 2014 and 2016. 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.

Of the targeted businesses of 4 191, 642 responses (15%) were realised.

There are 259 variables and 642 cases in the data set.
Abstract:
The South African Business Innovation Survey 2014-16 was designed based on the guidelines of the Oslo Manual. The survey was directly comparable with the core questionnaire for round 4 of the OECD Community Innovation Survey (CIS 4). Following international methodology allows the results of the South African Business Innovation Survey to be usefully compared with the results from other countries.

The South African Business Innovation Survey 2014-16 was based on a random stratified sample of business enterprises from the national business register (or equivalent) and results are extrapolated to the original population. A random stratified sample of 4 950 enterprises was obtained from the Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) business register. A process of sample cleaning identified 759 businesses as invalid because they were either not identifiable or traceable through several methods, duplicates, or inactive businesses. Invalid businesses were excluded and the remaining entries in the database totalled 4191 valid enterprises.

The South African Business Innovation Survey 2014-16 collected primary data and despite implementing an extensive advocacy strategy prior to and as part of the fieldwork, 642 businesses responded to the survey. 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

Expenditures on innovation [by innovation activities]

Factors hampering innovation in firms

Share of (innovation active) firms that co-operated with different types of co-operation 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

The key users of the data and findings include government departments, especially the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Ad hoc requests for data are also accommodated and inform academic papers, reports and outputs.