Methodological challenges of measuring innovation activities of micro companies

Event Date: 
Tuesday, 29 October, 2019 - 13:00
Location: 
IBMI
Lecturer: 
dr. Ana Slavec, InnoRenew CoE

Slovenia was identified as a region lagging in innovation and this is particularly noticeable in the country's forest-based value chain. However, Slovenia's Smart Specialisation Strategy identified this industry as having a strong potential for growth. To leverage the innovation and growth potential of the whain we need to gain a deeper understanding of existing innovation activities and reasons for the lack of innovation activities. While there is a large body of literature on innovation activities of small, medium, and large enterprises, there is very little known about micro companies (i.e., companies with less than 10 employees). This is probably due to the lack of data. On the EU level, data on innovation activities are collected by the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) which has been carried out every two years since 2006. However, the survey only includes companies with 10 or more employees.

Since micro companies represent more than 90% of wood value chain companies in Slovenia, data on their innovation activities is needed to fully understand it. Thus, we carried out our own survey on market and innovation activities of Slovenian companies in the wood value chain irrespective of size. The Bizi.si business directory was used as a sampling frame - given the small expected response rate we decided to include the full population. We developed a shorter questionnaire based on the CIS instrument and sent it to 7123 companies in the wood value chain, giving them an option to respond either on paper or online. For companies in the wood manufacturing and furniture sector we invested also in sending a second letter and we were able to reach a 7% response in these two sectors. In the lecture I present methodological challenges of surveying micro companies and computations bias that arises if micro companies are not included in the survey.

About IBMI

Institute for Biostatistics and Medical Informatics (IBMI), formerly Institute for BioMedical Informatics (so still IBMI) was founded by the Faculty of Medicine as a result of a need for a unit which would perform, or coordinate, tasks related to data analysis and providing information, relevant for research in medicine. The programme of the institute, and its development, have been adjusting thorugh time to changes in financing and technological progress, but the basic aim remain the same: to support research in medicine. This is achieved through the following tasks:

Contact

Institute for Biostatistics and Medical Informatics
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Medicine
Vrazov trg 2, 1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia

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