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News from 2019-07-09 / KfW Research
KfW SME Innovation Report 2018
Innovator rate has fallen again
The share of innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is returning to its long-term downward trend after a brief interim high. Since the middle of the 2000s, especially small SMEs with less than 5 employees have ceased their innovation activities. The central findings are:
- The innovator rate drops by 4 percentage points to 23%
- Innovation spending in SMEs continues to fall to EUR 30.7 billion
- Process innovations are developing positively against the trend - digitization is likely to be a focus here
- Research-based SMEs are launching market novelties seven times more frequently than companies without own research and development (R&D)