Questions of statistics of innovation

The emergence of innovation statistics in leading industrial countries was associated with increased attention to technological development as a factor in the competitiveness of companies, industries, countries. The formation of innovation policy required the creation of an adequate information base, and the answer to this was first methodological and practical measures for the statistical study of individual aspects of innovation in a number of countries. The need for panEuropean statistics of research and development arose quite a long time ago - in the 1960s, at the same time the first manual appeared for conducting relevant statistical surveys, the so-called “Frascati Guide”.

In 1969, Eurostat developed the first edition of the nomenclature for the analysis and comparison of scientific programs and budgets, which is the basis for collecting data on budgetary appropriations for research and development on socio-economic goals in the EU member states, compiling them and preparing annual reports on state funding science in the EU.

Subsequently, coordinated efforts to standardize innovation statistics and prepare relevant recommendations were undertaken under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The main provisions of the methodology for the statistical study of innovation, adopted in international statistical practice, are formulated in the so-called “Oslo Manual” 1.

The first RO was compiled in 1992 and laid the foundation for technology innovation statistics. Already at that time, the principle was fixed, which will then be reflected in all editions of the RO, including the current one: innovations are not necessarily associated with new knowledge, they can be the result of a new use of existing knowledge.

Innovation itself was defined as the introduction of technologically new products to the market and the introduction of technologically new processes. Subsequently, this definition was reduced to CCI-innovation (“TechnologyProduct-Process”). Thus, the European Union initially focused on innovation statistics specifically on tangible, tangible innovations.

The key question that the respondents were supposed to answer was: “Have you implemented at least one technologically new process or released at least one new product?” In the case of a positive answer, the company automatically fell into the rank of innovation. Of course, the respondent must indicate for whom his product / process is new (there is a scale - from “first in the world” to “new for our company”), and this is reflected in the results. But the essence of this does not change: a "new product / process" can be new only for the company itself - this is enough to receive its "innovative" status in the understanding of European statisticians.

The 1992 RO was focused on innovations in industry; in 1997, service industry innovations also came into the spotlight of statisticians. But even then, the fundamental shortcomings of the CCI ideology were clear:

• •    it is not entirely clear what “technologically new” means;

• •    The relationship between innovation and economic performance is unclear;

• •    Understanding the company as the only “engine" of innovation is erroneous and limited.

To solve these and other accumulated problems should have been a new version of the RO, which was published in 2005. Innovative companies, as before, remain in the center of attention of statisticians, but issues related to infrastructure, demand factors, competitors and partners, university and academic science, and state innovation policy have also been added. The factors that researchers are encouraged to consider in the new manual have also become much larger. This is the level of education, and the openness of the market, and the structure of industry, and much more. However, not only these changes are important.

The publication pushes the scope for measuring innovation in three important directions. Firstly, more attention is paid to the role in the innovation process of the relationship between firms and other organizations. Secondly, the importance of innovation in less knowledge-intensive sectors, such as services and low-tech industries, is recognized. Accordingly, to better describe the service sector, some aspects of the definition of innovations and the types of activities corresponding to them have been changed. Thirdly, the definition of “innovation” has been expanded to include two additional types of innovation - organizational and marketing.

The main innovation of RO-2005 is a new definition of innovation: "an innovative company makes the planned changes in its activities in order to improve its economic performance." In this regard, along with technological innovations, statistics now take into account organizational and marketing innovations (even such as, for example, changing the daily routine, rebranding or price reduction).

It should be noted that even the creators of RO-2005, speaking about organizational and marketing innovations, admit that distinguishing them from banal daily changes is not so simple. The RO recommends recognizing for innovations only those organizational innovations that are part of a certain strategy, and in the case of marketing, the concept of promotion.

At the same time, the concept of “new or improved product” is not unambiguous. For example, how to evaluate a product first produced in Russia, but which was abandoned in other countries, because it is obsolete or environmentally unsafe. Such examples, unfortunately, are not unique, sometimes the provision of cheap credit abroad was associated with the purchase of obsolete equipment.

As the researchers point out, based on a review of publications related to the evaluation of the statistical measurement of innovation, often there is no clear idea even of the very concept of “innovation”. So, for example, technological innovations are opposed to grocery, although in fact the latter are one of the varieties of technological innovations. Often, an integral part of them is excluded from the composition of innovations, namely, new products for enterprises, but not new products for the market. A different understanding of the phenomenon of innovation among researchers leads to an erroneous definition of the concept, and, accordingly, incorrect measurement and analytical assessment of the scale of innovation in the economy.

Innovation statistics is designed to reflect the processes of creation, implementation and distribution on the market of innovative products, services, and technological processes. At present, the main tasks of innovation statistics also cover the measurement of resources allocated to innovative activities, the assessment of factors conducive to or inhibiting innovation, and the analysis of the impact of innovation on enterprise performance.

The system of statistical indicators characterizing the innovative activity of industrial enterprises (key indicators) is built up in the following sections: "innovative activity of enterprises", "sources of information about innovations", "goals of innovation", "costs of technological innovation", "research and development" , “The number of joint research and development projects”, “technological exchange”, “results of innovation”, “factors hindering innovation”.

It should be emphasized that the adaptation of international experience to national characteristics, both historically established and generated by market transformations, required consideration of specific economic and organizational factors, the specifics of statistical accounting and reporting in our country. This not only excluded the direct borrowing of foreign experience, but also made it possible to propose new methodological approaches enriching international practice in some respects.

Source used:

• 1.    Konovalov V.M. Innovative saga. - Moscow; St. Petersburg; Kiev: Williams Publishing House, 2005.

• 2.    Sukhotin A.K. Paradoxes of science. - M .: Young Guard, 1978.

• 3.    Hayley A. Wheels. - M .: Publishing house AST, 2000, p. 235.

• 4.    Rogov E. Breakthrough technology found in the sandbox // Inventor and rationalizer. - M., 2010

"Экономика и социум" №12(67) 2019