Innovation in South African businesses, 2019-2021: activities, practices and capabilities

Abstract

The results presented in this report convey a snapshot of innovation in the South African formal business sector in the three-year period, 2019-2021, adding to the existing South African innovation data set, and complimenting other national surveys, including the annual South African R&D Survey. Additional documents accompany this report, which delve deeper into the data to provide further insight into specific topics covered by the survey, as well as the survey methodology. These include: 1. An executive summary including the headline results of the survey 2. A detailed methodology note covering sampling and response, imputations, and projection of results. 3. A detailed weighting methodology note. 4. Appendix tables providing the source data for the tables and figures in this report. 5. Aggregated data tables providing a breakdown of all variables in the survey, by sector and size class. 6. Eight sectoral briefs with specific statistics for technological capabilities, barriers to innovation and outcomes of innovation for each subsector. Respondents can use these to compare themselves to other businesses in their sectors. 7. Fact sheet 1 on innovation funding in South African innovation-active firms. This covers cost-related obstacles to innovation activities, sources of funding, awareness of public funding, types of public support applied for or obtained and reasons for not applying for public funding. 8. Fact sheet 2 on innovation rates over time from 2002-2004 to the latest period, 2019-2021 9. A policy brief on the innovation collaboration activity of innovation-active South African firms. The policy brief classifies groups of innovation-active firms in terms of how they collaborate and looks at their reported barriers to innovation collaboration, types of collaboration partners, and geographic location of collaboration partners.