UK innovation survey 2021: results for Scotland

UK Innovation Survey 2021 – Results for Scotland

This report presents the Scottish findings from the UK Innovation Survey 2021, covering the three-year period from 2018 to 2020.

Key points

• in Scotland, 39.0% of businesses were innovation active in 2018-20, this compares to 44.9% for the UK as a whole
• between 2016-18 and 2018-20, the innovation active share in Scotland increased by 6.8 percentage points. This compares to an increase of 7.3 percentage points for the UK as a whole
• in Scotland, in 2018-20, small (10-49 employees) businesses were least likely to be innovation active (36.5%).  Businesses with 100-249 employees were most likely to be innovation active (57.5%)
• businesses in the 'Scientific Research and Development' sector were most likely to be innovation active in 2018-20. Business in the ‘Real estate activities’ and ‘Accommodation and Food Services’ sectors were least likely to be innovation active in 2018-20
• in 2018-20, the highest share of innovation expenditure in Scotland was spent on ‘Acquisition of machinery and equipment, computer hardware and software’.  For the UK this was ‘Internal Research and Development’
• for both Scotland and the UK the main driver for innovation, in 2018-20, was improving the quality of goods or services
• in 2018-20, of factors constraining innovation activities, ‘Issues related to COVID-19 pandemic’ was ranked as of ‘high importance’ by the largest proportion of businesses in Scotland and the UK
• in terms of innovative firms as a share of total firms, in 2016-18, Scotland is ranked in 18th place amongst OECD and partner economies