Similarities and differences of conducting innovation survey – Latvian and Estonian approaches
ENAn innovation survey conducted in Latvia addresses one of the major driving forces of sustainable economic growth – innovation. In Latvia, there is still room for improvement in the process of collecting innovation statistics in order to obtain more accurate data. According to the innovation survey results, Latvia has a small number of enterprises involved in product or process development; for comparison, every tenth enterprise in Estonia had completed an innovation project during 2008–2010, and an innovation project was ongoing in every sixth enterprise (Heinlo, 2010), which is the best innovation performance among the Baltic states. This could be explained by the special features of collecting innovation statistics in Estonia. Estonia began conducting innovation surveys earlier than Latvia, and thus Estonia has a broader experience in the area of producing innovation statistics. That experience could be useful for Latvia, currently looking for ways of improving the method of collecting innovation statistics. Support for, and development of innovation performance is one of the priority tasks for the government of Latvia, and thus high quality statistics on innovation in Latvia will provide a point of reference to entrepreneurs and policy-makers and support decision- making, which would accelerate Latvia’s progress towards innovation-based economy.The purpose of this paper is to discuss individual features in the process of collecting innovation statistics in Estonia and Latvia based on the Community Innovation Survey 2010 (CIS 2010) methodology and results in order to identify weaknesses in the process of collecting innovation statistics in Latvia. On the basis of this theoretical background, the paper offers proposals for the improvement of approach to compilation of innovation statistics in Latvia. The theoretical and methodological evidence is based on the following: analysis of economic literature; scientific works published by Latvian and foreign researchers; legal documents of the European Commission; the statistics database of the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, Statistics Estonia and Statistics Lithuania; statistical and methodological materials by Eurostat and other international agencies. Research methods mainly used for the paper are bibliography review and the methods of statistical analysis such as grouping, processing and comparative analysis.
