IN Innovation in Companies Statistics

The Innovation in Companies Statistics provide information on technological and non-technological innovation processes within companies, presenting indicators that enable the understanding of these processes (economic impact, types of innovative activities, costs, etc.).

Results are presented to quantify innovative companies, as well as expenditure on innovation and its distribution, in accordance with the different activities related to technological innovation, the intensity of the innovation and its public financing, among others.

The results are broken down by company size, in accordance with employed persons and the four large sectors of economic activity: agriculture, industry, construction and services.

The primary source of information is the Innovation in Companies Survey, conducted on an annual basis by the INE in cooperation with Idescat in Catalonia (in accordance with the agreement signed by the two institutes). Idescat performs the detailed statistical treatment of the information for Catalonia and thus offers an overview of the innovative activity carried out by companies.

In 2017, for budgetary management reasons beyond the INE's control, the survey sample was considerably smaller than usual. This means that some indicators do not have the quality required to be published, as the number of associated sampling errors is very high. For this reason, only some basic indicators in the Basic tables section are published for 2017.

In 2018, a methodological change was made due to the application of the new revision of the Oslo Manual (2018), which produced a break in the time series with the results of previous years.

As of 2020, the survey is biennial.