CORDIS Archive

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) CD-ROM

The Community Innovation Survey (CIS) was jointly initiated and implemented by Eurostat and DG Enterprise under the aegis of the European Innovation Monitoring System (EIMS) part of the Innovation Programme. It was developed between 1991 and 1993 in co-operation with independent experts and the OECD. Based on the ‘OECD Guidelines for collecting and interpreting data on technological innovation - the Oslo manual’, a common questionnaire was developed.

The objective of CIS is to collect firm-level data on inputs to, and outputs of, the innovation process across a wide range of industries and across Member States and regions, and to use this data in high-quality analyses. This will contribute to the future development of policies for innovation and the diffusion of new technologies at Community, Member State and regional level.

CIS has three main characteristics. First, there had never before been internationally comparable data on non-R&D resources devoted to innovation and the output of the innovation processes. Second, it is the first time that a harmonised business survey has been implemented in all EU Member States. Third, the harmonised survey will not only give policy makers and analysts information on the sectoral level, but also give them a detailed picture of innovation activities at the level of European enterprises.

The First Community Innovation Survey (CIS I) provides a major new source of information on innovation at enterprise level gathered from around 40,000 firms in all EU Member States, Norway and Iceland. This constitutes a unique database on innovation, which will act as a foundation stone for future work in the area of analysis of innovation from academic and policy making perspectives.

Studies have been undertaken using the CIS data, which have lead to the publication of over fifty significant reports on a wide range of innovation related topics. These reports are known as the Innovation programme EIMS Studies.

In order to facilitate access for researchers and policy makers to this data resource, a CD-ROM has been constructed and is commercially available from the EUROSTAT Data Shop.

In 1997, the Second Community Innovation Survey (CIS II) was launched. A strict co-ordination of the work has been imposed in order to guarantee a much higher comparability between countries.