Services Innovation in Ireland - Options for ... - Europe INNOVA

New Service Products and Service Development/Delivery Innovation
Table 10 provides data on product and process innovation by size band of company and sector
(manufacturing and services). This data suggests that larger services companies appear to have higher
levels of product and process innovation than their smaller counterparts, as shown also in respect of
the R&D expenditure findings discussed above.
Services companies do, however, tend to lag behind manufacturing on both product and
process innovation measures. This is particularly noteworthy in the case of process innovation
with less than half as many services sector companies reporting process innovation than in
manufacturing companies.
Table 10 Product and Process Innovation by Industry Sector and Size
Source: Forfás (2002) Results of the Third Community Innovation Survey for Ireland, Report Presented to the
Forfás Board, November 2002.
Given the relatively low response rates of the CIS3, it is important to support these findings by
considering results from complementary surveys. Here, the work of InnovationLab has been important
in helping to track service innovations through its IIP surveys covering both in both the Republic of
Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Table 11 Innovation in Services/Service Products
Notes: Figures relate to tradable services businesses with ten employees or more. Survey responses are weighted to
give representative results. No statistically significant differences exist between the Northern Ireland and Republic
of Ireland figures.
Total Number Developed New Developed New
of Firms Products 1998-2000 Processes 1998-2000
All Firms 3,500 43% 33%
Manufacturing 2,000 49% 40%
10-49 1,262 38% 36%
50-249 564 61% 41%
250+ 173 87% 71%
Services 1,500 32% 19%
10-49 1,052 32% 20%
50-249 331 40% 21%
250+ 117 46% 49%
Source: Roper, S., Hewitt-Dundas, N. and Savage, M. (2003) ‘Innovation, Best Practice Adoption and
Innovation Networks: a comparison of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland’, Innovation Lab.
104
Northern Republic of Total
Ireland Ireland
Service innovation during 2000 to 2002 (% businesses) 49.40 52.70 51.70
Sales from entirely new services (%) 17.90 18.20 18.10
Sales from services copied from elsewhere (%) 7.60 7.00 7.20
Sales from improved services (%) 18.30 18.60 18.50