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4 Measuring Innovation
Pages 20-26

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From page 20...
... Since innovation is a term widely used in society, the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) goes to great lengths to convey to its survey respondents what is meant by innovation or innovation activities.
From page 21...
... , size class, and whether or not respondents reported R&D activity.2 BRDIS questions on innovation were augmented in the 2009 and 2010 versions of the survey; the 2011 version is currently under development.3 NCSES endeavors to gather more information on innovation activities, going beyond simple "yes/no" questions on whether a firm introduced or significantly improved goods, services or processes. These efforts have also included attempts to develop more comparability to key questions in the CIS and to ensure that the innovation questions are answered by firms that do not do R&D.
From page 22...
... Also needed for comparability are statistics using the same set of industries typically used in statistics for other countries. An example is the core set of industries used by Eurostat for comparison of innovation statistics among European Union countries, including: mining; manufacturing; and selected service industries, such as wholesale trade, transports, financial services, information technology (IT)
From page 23...
... For example, users have no independent measure of whether the innovations of firms that innovate but do not do R&D are more or less important than those that do R&D. Users would have more confidence in and understanding of BRDIS innovation measures if they knew that knowledge input measures correlated with actual performance and even more confidence if they knew what some of the firms were calling innovation -- how closely their reports matched the standards in the question.
From page 24...
... At the panel's workshop, John Haltiwanger presented a compelling presentation on what he and other researchers have developed using Census Bureau data on firm dynamics -- that is, firm births and deaths over time. These data can provide the groundwork to answer important questions from policy makers and researchers, such as: Does innovation come disproportionately from new firms?
From page 25...
... RECOMMENDATION 3: The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics should begin to match its Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey data to data from ongoing surveys at the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to create indicators of firm dynamism.
From page 26...
... Such measures would be an important step in furthering international comparability on innovation indicators. NCSES should conduct its own sensitivity analysis to fine tune meaningful age categories of highgrowth firms.


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