The Directory of Education and Science Statistics (DGEEC) and Statistics Portugal present the information on business innovation based on data collected in the Community Survey on Innovation (CIS) for 2016-2018.

The CIS survey, with biennial frequency, aims to produce and update statistical indicators on innovation in enterprises through a harmonized survey at European level, which allows international comparison of data, as well as responding to national and international commitments for the collection, treatment and dissemination of official data of Science and Technology statistics, namely the commitments made to Eurostat for the production of statistics on Innovation.

Compared to CIS2016 edition, the survey reflects methodological and concept changes following the revision of the Oslo Manual, in which the major change for the definition of business innovation has been the reduction in the complexity of the previous list-based definition of four types of innovations (product, process, organisational and marketing), to two main types: product innovation and process innovation. And also reduces the ambiguity of the requirement for a significant change by comparing both new and improved innovations to the enterprise’s existing products or business processes: 

• product innovation is a new or improved good or service that differs significantly from the enterprise’s previous goods or services and that has been introduced on the market.

• business process innovation is a new or improved business process for one or more business functions that differs significantly from the enterprise’s previous business processes and that has been brought into use by the enterprise.

In this edition there were also changes in the observation variables, in the collection data method and in the scope/range of the population, with the inclusion of all sectors of economic activity, so this publication does not carry out a comparative analysis of the results of previous versions of this survey.