Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

NOVELTY

The degree of novelty of an innovation and whether the innovation is developed within the business or externally are important factors in analysing innovation. In order to assess development activity, businesses which had introduced an innovation (i.e. innovating businesses) were asked:

• whether the new or significantly improved goods, services, processes or methods they had introduced were new to the world, new to Australia, new to the industry, or new to the business only (these categories are mutually exclusive); and

• who developed the new or significantly improved goods, services, processes or methods.

Businesses could provide more than one response, i.e. they were asked to report the degree of novelty and who developed the innovation for each type of introduced innovation. This meant that a business that had introduced four new goods or services could legitimately provide a response against each of the degrees of novelty specified.

For the two topics included in this section, it is not possible to release these data by business employment size or industry due to confidentiality requirements.

Introduced innovation(a)(b), by innovation type, by degree of novelty, 2010 - 11
		New or significantly improved:
		goods and/or services	operational processes	organisational/managerial processes	marketing methods
		%	%	%	%
Degree of novelty of the introduced innovation which was:
	new to the world	4.5	1.7	0.8	1.2
	new to Australia but not the world	8.0	1.3	0.8	1.8
	new to the industry within Australia but not new to Australia or to the world	9.8	6.9	6.1	5.0
	new to the business only (i.e. none of the above)	82.2	90.9	93.4	92.3
(a) Proportions are of innovating businesses only (i.e. those who introduced innovation)
(b) Businesses could provide more than one response to each question (i.e. report for all of their new or significantly improved goods, services, processes or methods).

Innovation that was new to the business only was the most common response for all innovation types. New goods or services were the most commonly reported type of introduced innovation for each of the remaining novelty responses: new to the world (4%); new to Australia (8%); and new to the industry within Australia (10%).

INNOVATING BUSINESSES: Source of development of innovation(a)(b), by innovation type, by source, 2010 - 11
		goods and/or services	operational processes	organisational/managerial processes	marketing methods
		%	%	%	%
Who developed the innovation
	This business or related company only	69.2	70.6	78.2	62.4
	This business in cooperation with other businesses or institutions	22.9	21.5	17.6	30.7
	Other businesses or institutions	13.1	10.5	7.4	11.5
(a) Proportions are of innovating businesses only (i.e. those who introduced innovation).
(b) Businesses could provide more than one response to each question (i.e. report for all of their new or significantly improved goods, services, processes or methods).

Development of innovation within this business or a related company only was the most commonly reported source of development for all four broad innovation types. Marketing methods was the innovation most likely to be developed by the business in cooperation with other businesses or institutions (31%). Goods or services had the highest proportion of innovation developed by other businesses or institutions (13%).

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