Discussion and Conclusions

As the European unification process proceeds, there is an increasing need for the collection of internationally comparable innovation data. Unfortunately, in the past there were too many isolated attempts at developing new innovation indicators. This holds in particular for innovation indicators in postal surveys. Due to a lack of communication and coordination, people did not learn from each other’s mistakes. Moreover, in spite of remarkable conceptual similarities, definitions and standards were often just sufficiently different to prevent straightforward comparisons of results between countries. Fortunately, following a recent test of an international draft questionnaire for innovation surveys (see Chapter 7), there is now a good prospect that a harmonised international ‘core’ questionnaire for innovation surveys will soon be used in large-scale surveys.