Community Innovation Survey 2020-2022
Small enterprises get a larger share of their turnover from product innovation than large enterprises in 2020-2022
Statistical news from Statistics Sweden 2023-11-09 8.00
During the period 2020-2022, 48 percent of Swedish enterprises were innovative while half the Business enterprise sector performed innovation activities. Small product innovative enterprises generated 25 percent of their turnover from product innovations while the corresponding share for large enterprises was 23 percent.
Over the reference period 2020-2022, the share of innovative enterprises in Sweden amounted to 48 percent which is a decrease from 55 percent in the previous period between 2018-2020. Changes over time should, however, be interpreted with caution due to a time series break (more information at the end of this news item). The share of innovative enterprises increases with size and among small enterprises, which is the largest group, 45 percent were innovative compared to the smaller group of large enterprises where 73 percent of enterprises were innovative. For the whole Business enterprise sector, process innovation was more common than product innovation. About 30 percent of enterprises were product innovative compared to 41 percent being process innovative. This relation between product and process innovation held for all size classes during the reference period.
The novelty of product innovations
Product innovation concerns both new and significantly improved goods and services. During 2020-2022, 65 percent of product innovative enterprises introduced goods or services that were new both to the enterprise and to the enterprise’s market while 70 percent introduced goods or services new only to the enterprise. An innovation being new to the enterprise’s market indicates a uniqueness in the innovation that the enterprise offers. For questions in the survey pertaining to turnover from innovative products, the reference period is the calendar year 2022. It is common that activities such as marketing and uptake of innovative products happen during periods longer than a year and there is naturally a delay between the introduction of a product to the market and turnover being generated for the enterprise. Product innovations that are introduced on the market late in the reference period will therefore likely not yet have contributed to turnover.
The total share of turnover for product innovative enterprises generated by product innovations new to both the enterprise and its market, and product innovations new only to the enterprise was 13 and 10 percent respectively. Small enterprises saw a larger share of their turnover coming from innovative products, 25 percent. Even if shares only differed slightly between size classes that is more than medium and large enterprises, which indicates that the novelty of innovations is more important the smaller the enterprise.
Innovations with environmental benefits
Of innovative enterprises, 59 percent introduced at least one new or significantly improved product or process with significant environmental benefits during 2020-2022. The most common environmental benefit was reduced energy use or CO2 footprint, 36 percent of innovative enterprises obtained this environmental benefit from their innovations. It was more common for large enterprises than for SMEs to obtain this environmental benefit which could be a result of the enterprise activities since more innovative, large enterprises are found in manufacturing industries than in service industries where the focus on reducing CO2 emissions is more pronounced.
Small need for innovation activities among non-innovative enterprises
For a new product or process to become an innovation it needs to be introduced to the market or implemented in the enterprise. Innovative enterprises are innovation active by definition, but so are also enterprises that have conducted innovation activities even though they have not introduced any new products or processes. For example, it can be economically unprofitable for enterprises that invest large sums in innovation projects to introduce new products every year since it shortens the lifespan of previous products.
The share of innovation active enterprises in different size classes during 2020-2022 was somewhat larger than the share of innovative enterprises. However, differences were smallest for small enterprises and largest for large enterprises with 1,6 and 5,0 percentage points respectively. Information and communication industries had an innovation activity of 73 percent. This is an industry that is often in the top when measuring the prevalence of innovation. The lowest share of innovation activity was found in construction industries (41-43), land, water and air transport industries (49-51) and education (85) with 32, 37 and 38 percent respectively. The total share of innovation activity in the Business enterprise sector was 50 percent.
A new question in the survey concerned the need for innovation activities among enterprises. Innovation active enterprises were asked why they did not have more innovation activities while non-innovation active enterprises were asked why they did not perform any such activities during 2020-2022. In common for both innovation active and non-innovation active enterprises was that a majority responded that they saw no need for more, or any, innovation activities. Among non-innovation active enterprises, 86 percent did not have a need for innovation activities. For innovation active enterprises, 50 percent saw no need for further innovation activities. Lacking resources and other reasons were less commonly given as the reason for not having any or not having more innovation activities. Among innovation active enterprises this was more common than among non-innovation active enterprises, with 28 and 22 percent respectively reporting lacking resources and other reasons.
The share of innovation active enterprises decreased between 2018-2020 and 2020-2022 with 4 percentage points. One possible reason behind this development could be that there was little need for innovation activities among enterprises that previously have been innovation active.
| Lacking resources | Other reasons than lacking resources | No need | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Non-innovation active | 6% | 8% | 86% |
| Innovation active | 28% | 22% | 50% |
Changes in the statistical unit
Ahead of the reference period 2020-2022, changes have been made in the statistical unit enterprise. The number of enterprises with multiple legal units increases in the population, from about 30 enterprises to 50 000. This entails that there are fewer, but larger enterprises. This mitigates problems of double counting for some variables, such as turnover, as internal flows are consolidated. It also causes changes in the population structure concerning industry as well as having effects on size classes and regional reporting of the statistics.
More information can be found on:
The economic-statistical system
Changes in the statistical unit has also affected the design of the survey which in turn has effects for the statistics produced. More information on the design can be found in the methodological documentation for the survey. A report concerning the time series break will also be published on 2023-11-30.
Comparisons over time should be made sparingly and with caution.
Statistical Database
More information is available in the Statistical Database
Feel free to use the facts from this statistical news but remember to state Source: Statistics Sweden.