Initial analysis of the 2005 UK Innovation Survey shows that:
in the three-year period 2002–04, 25 per cent of enterprises with ten or more employees were product (goods and services) innovators, 16 per cent were process innovators, while 57 per cent of enterprises in the UK were active in developing or implementing innovations.
The most frequently reported impact of businesses’ innovation activities was on the quality of goods and services produced or supplied, cited by a third of enterprises.
Information to enable innovation came most often from sources within the business and from market partners. Technical and other formal standards were also important sources.
Compared with the 2001 UK Innovation Survey, the proportion of firms engaged in innovation activity has increased by some 14 percentage points.