INTRODUCTION
This release presents information about the incidence of innovation in Australian business and related practices or influences, as collected by the 2010-11 Business Characteristics Survey (BCS).
A key part of the BCS is the production of annual business use of information technology and innovation indicators, with a more detailed set of items for each of these topics collected every second year (i.e. in alternating years). The 2010-11 BCS collected detailed information relating to the incidence of innovation and related practices and influences in Australian business. An overview of the ABS' statistical and output program related to innovation is provided in Appendix 1: ABS Collection of Innovation Statistics.
CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE
From 2009-10, the scope of the BCS was expanded to include employing businesses in the Agriculture, forestry and fishing industry. This change represents the final stage of implementation of the Integrated Business Characteristics Strategy (IBCS). See Explanatory Notes for more detail.
In the 2010-11 BCS, additional information was collected from innovation-active businesses about their expenditure on innovative activities. Please see Appendix 2: Innovation Expenditure for further information. In addition, data was also collected from innovating businesses about the benefits of any introduced innovation. To ensure that respondents were not excessively burdened by these additional questions, information was not collected from businesses about the sources of labour for innovation.
DATA QUALITY
Information about data quality provided in the Quality Declaration and Explanatory Notes must be taken into consideration when interpreting the statistics in this release.
STRUCTURE OF THIS RELEASE
There are two components to this release: web based information and data cubes. The data cubes contain detailed tables for the data that underpin the tables, graphs and commentary included in the summary information section.
FUTURE RELEASE FROM THE 2010-11 BCS
Further estimates from the 2010-11 BCS will be released on 13 September 2012 as part of Selected Characteristics of Australian Business (cat. no. 8167.0). Some of these data will be cross-classified by innovation status, providing a rich picture of differences in characteristics of innovation-active and non innovation-active businesses.
INQUIRIES
For further information about these and related statistics, contact Andrew Puljic on (08) 9360 5229.
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