Innovation is the key

Innovation is critical to business success according to 93 per cent of

companies who dedicate an average of 12 per cent of their turnover to innovation activities - a major new

reveals this week.

But Government policy is failing to support large swathes of innovation activity because it is focusing its attention almost exclusively on research and development (R&D) and supporting science and technology research at the expense of other areas of business innovation.

In the survey, only 41 per cent of companies agree that R&D is the best indicator of innovation activity and only a fifth agree that all innovation is dependent on technology developments.

The DTI's R&D scoreboard of the top 750 UK companies equates R&D spend to approximately two per cent of sales on R&D, which is around £17 billion. This survey suggests that companies are actually spending around six times that amount on innovation-related activities.