The Community Innovation Survey

The survey was originally conducted every four years, but since 2005 has been conducted every two. The UK Innovation Survey 2009, the sixth Europe-wide CIS was sent to 28,000 UK enterprises with 10 or more employees and achieved a 50 per cent response rate. It provides the UK data covering the three-year period from 2006 to 2008.

Business innovation is a vital ingredient in raising the productivity, competitiveness and growth potential of modern economies. Providing the right economic conditions for, and using appropriate policy instruments to encourage innovation in the UK is a central objective. Measuring the level of innovation activity in the UK and identifying where policy might be best targeted contributes to the pursuit of that objective. The Community Innovation Survey complements other indicators of innovativeness by providing a regular snapshot of innovation inputs and outputs and the constraints faced by UK businesses in their innovation efforts, across the range of UK industries and business enterprises. It has the additional benefit of providing the basis for some comparisons with other European countries.

The survey includes sections on factors that hamper innovation, the impact of innovation on the business and the sources of information used. It also touches on aspects of the wider innovation process, such as the introduction of new management techniques.

The previous Community Innovation Survey, CIS 5, took place in 2007. Prior to this CIS4 took place in 2005, CIS3 in 2001, and CIS2 in 1997. Analyses of the results of these surveys can be found below:

The CIS3 Questionnaire is available in pdf format from the following link:
CIS3 Questionnaire (PDF, 537 Kb) 

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