Eurostat

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) is a survey about innovation activities in enterprises. The survey is designed to provide information on the innovativeness of sectors by type of enterprises, on the different types of innovation and on various aspects of the development of an innovation, such as objectives, sources of information, public funding or expenditures. The CIS provides statistics broken down by countries, types of innovators, economic activities and size classes. The survey is currently carried out every two years across the European Union, EFTA countries and EU candidate countries. In order to ensure comparability across countries, Eurostat together with the countries developed a standard core questionnaire (see in Annex) accompanied by a set of definitions and methodological recommendations. CIS 2014 concepts and its underlying methodology are also based on the Oslo Manual (2005) 3rd edition (see link at the bottom of the page). CIS 2014 results were collected under Commission Regulation No 995/2012. This Regulation defines the mandatory target population of the survey referring to enterprises in the Core NACE categories (see section 3.3.) with at least 10 employees. Further activities may be covered on a voluntary basis in national datasets. Most statistics are based on the 3-year reference period 2012-2014, but some use only one calendar year (2012 or 2014). CIS 2014 includes an ad-hoc module on innovations with environmental benefits. While European innovation statistics use aggregated national data, the microdata sets can be consulted by researchers via the SAFE Centre of Eurostat in Luxembourg or via CD-ROM releases in a more anonymised form; some countries also provide access to their microdata through national Safe Centres. Since the provision of microdata is voluntary, microdatasets do not cover all countries.