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 that introduced an innovation (i.e. innovating businesses) were asked:

• whether the new or significantly improved goods, services, processes or methods 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 constraints.

Introduced innovation(a)(b), by innovation type, by degree of novelty, 2012-13
	New or significantly improved:
	goods or services	operational processes	organisational/managerial processes	marketing methods
	%	%	%	%
Degree of novelty of the introduced innovation that was:
new to the world	11.0	4.2	1.1	1.7
new to Australia but not new to the world	8.1	3.4	1.4	1.5
new to the industry within Australia but not new to Australia or the world	9.4	7.9	6.1	6.7
new to the business only (i.e. none of the above)	75.0	85.4	91.6	91.7
(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 across all innovation types. New goods or services were the most common type of introduced innovation for each of the remaining novelty responses: new to the world (11%); new to Australia but not the world (8%); and new to the industry within Australia but not new to Australia or the world (9%).

INNOVATING BUSINESSES: Source of development of innovation(a)(b), by innovation type, by source, 2012-13
	New or significantly improved:
	goods or services	operational processes	organisational/managerial processes	marketing methods
	%	%	%	%
Who developed the innovation
This business or related company only	71.4	76.1	76.4	62.2
This business in cooperation with other businesses or institutions	20.1	22.6	18.6	30.2
Other businesses or institutions	14.1	8.0	8.6	13.6
(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 related company only was the most common source of development for all four broad innovation types. Marketing methods innovation was most likely to be developed by businesses in cooperation with other businesses or institutions (30%), while other businesses or institutions were most likely to be the source of development for both goods or services and marketing methods (both 14%).