Innovation
Issue No. 24 - August/September 2005
[SA ] – centre of innovation
by Professor Richard Blandy
Earlier this month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics agreed to an “analytical collaboration” with me and my University of South Australia colleague, Zeljka Sporer, on the causes of business innovation.
The formal title of this collaboration is: Understanding the causes of business innovation in Australia, South Australia and Europe using ABS surveys and other sources, including European surveys. As this title suggests, a significant program of work is envisaged, including comparative research involving a number of European countries that have collected similar data to the ABS.
The main body of ABS data that is the subject of this collaboration is the ABS’s 2003 Business Innovation Survey of 8500 businesses from every State in Australia. The ABS’s main report on its findings from these data was published in ABS, Innovation in Australian Business, cat no. 8158.0, 17 February, 2005, some results from which were included in my Economic Outlook article in the April/May issue of South Australia in-business.
The purpose of the work that Zeljka Sporer and I are now doing is to assist the Australian Statistician inform the Australian people of outcomes of the ABS’s data collection work in the area of business innovation. We will be writing articles for publication by the ABS as well as for publication and presentation elsewhere.
This present article for South Australia
in-business is intended to inform readers of some preliminary results from very early analysis of these remarkable data.
The results take in Australia as a whole, but with a special focus on South Australia. Some earlier, experimental, Australian, results were presented in May to an international conference on innovation in Dubrovnik.
To recap some figures from the ABS’s February report:
Nearly 46 per cent of South Australian businesses innovated in the period 2001-2003, a number 10 percentage points greater than the State with t...
