Innovation State of the Nation 2023

Innovation, both new to the firm and new to the market, was evident across all sectors, sizebands and regions of the UK, with even the smallest micro businesses reporting significant shares of new to the market innovation. [...] To contribute to these agendas this Section provides for the first time a profile of the gender and ethnic composition of firms’ innovation teams, and an overview of any recruitment challenges which firms have faced over the year prior to the ISNS 2023 survey. [...] Additionally, the impact of Covid and Brexit (for this Northern Ireland based firm, some products have come out of the market because of the Protocol) has meant a loss of impetus, but the longer-term ambition is to grow the business for the benefit of the owner’s children who will take over in due course. [...] How does innovation in these companies compare to that in larger firms? Is it, as we might expect, more focused on new to the firm rather than new to the market innovation? And, how does this relate to the objectives of these smaller firms? Exploring in more detail the profile of innovation activity in frontier and non-frontier firms and identifying the barriers and enablers of innovation in eac. [...] The corporate structure of businesses is often thought to be important for innovation outcomes due to the potential for knowledge sharing between subsidiaries of larger firms and the larger financial resources of groups of businesses4.