UK innovation survey 2023 – results for Scotland

This report presents the Scottish findings from the UK Innovation Survey 2023, covering the three-year period from 2020 to 2022. It makes comparisons with previous surveys where appropriate and includes results for Scotland and the UK.

Key Points

• in Scotland, 32.4% of businesses were innovation active in 2020-22; this compares to 36.3% for the UK as a whole
• between 2018-20 and 2020-22, the share of businesses in Scotland that were innovation active decreased by 6.6 percentage points; this compares to a decrease of 8.6 percentage points UK-wide
• the reduction in innovation active businesses is driven by a decrease in business process innovation; in Scotland this fell by 7.1 percentage points between 2018-20 and 2020-22, whereas product innovation was largely unchanged
• in Scotland, in 2020-22, small (10-49 employees) businesses were least likely to be innovation active (30.1%) and businesses with 100-249 employees were most likely to be innovation active (47.0%)
• in Scotland, in 2020-22, businesses in the ‘Scientific research and development’ sector were most likely to be innovation active (67.4%), whereas businesses in the ‘Accommodation and Food Services’ sector were least likely to be innovation active (17.8%)
• for both Scotland and the UK as a whole the main driver for innovation, in 2020-22, was improving the quality of goods or services
• ‘Issues relating to COVID 19 pandemic’ and ‘Recent increases in energy prices’ were the two most important factors in constraining innovation activity for broader innovators in Scotland and UK-wide in 2020-2022
• the most common reason for not innovating in 2020-22 was ‘No need due to market conditions’; 41.6% of Scottish non broader innovators selected this as a reason for not innovating
• in terms of innovative firms as a share of total firms, in 2018-20, Scotland was ranked in 18th place amongst 34 OECD and partner economies
• in Scotland 56.7% of broader innovators introduced an Innovations With Environmental Benefits (IWEB) in 2020-22, this compares to 51.8% UK-wide