Innovation: The UK Innovation Survey (UKIS)

The UKIS is the main source of information on innovation within UK businesses, covering areas such as the extent of product, process and wider innovation; expenditure on innovations, drivers and barriers to innovation; and co-operation partners.

The survey is the UK contribution to the EU Community Innovation Survey, undertaken by the ONS, and is based on a stratified random sample of 28,000 firms with 10 or more employees, with sampling based on sector. The survey covers all sectors of the economy with the exclusion of agricultural businesses. In 2013, for example, UKIS achieved a sample of 14,000 firms and covers the three year period 2010-12.
ERC have created an unbalanced panel dataset covering the innovation activity of over 65,000 companies over the 2002 to 2012 period. We anticipate data covering the 2013-2015 period becoming available around March 2016. UKIS data can easily be matched with other official data sets such as the BSD described above.
Key measures covered in the UKIS are:
• Investment in R&D and innovation activity and related outcomes;
• Data on cooperation for innovation and related knowledge sources;
• Background data on the firm and its customers;
• Trade, growth and skills data although each is relatively limited.
The UKIS is a sample survey and observations are therefore weighted for any analysis. ERC have used this data for a number of econometric analyses. In addition this data was the basis for the ERC ‘Geography of Innovation’ report published in May 2015.