BackMSMEs innovate most in food products, rubber and plastics: survey
More than a third of the firms are found to be innovative, says a report based on a survey of 9,001 firms
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New Delhi: Most of the innovation in the Indian micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector is taking place in rubber and plastics and manufacturing of food products, says the Indian National Innovation Survey released by the department of science and technology on Monday. More than a third of the firms in the overall sample of firms surveyed are found to be innovative, it says.
The report is based on a survey of 9,001 firms, largely MSMEs, spread across 26 states and five Union Territories across various industrial sectors in the country. As many as 70% of firms have innovations in the form of introducing new machines. This is followed by quality and standards-related activities (40% of the firms) and product and process innovations (32% and 34% of firms, respectively).
More than half of the innovative firms are involved in non-technological innovations; nearly half of these are into marketing innovation and the other half are into organizational innovation. Most of the innovative firms have a workforce of less than 100, and are privately owned. Interestingly, the old large firms established before 1990 show more innovation-related activities than those set up in later years.
The survey defines two indicators for ranking sectors and states in terms of innovation: innovation intensity and innovation potentiality. Innovation intensity is defined as a ratio between number of innovative firms in a state or sector and total number of firms in the state or sector. Innovation potentiality is defined as weighted innovation intensity, where the state or sector is assigned a weightage based on its share of total innovative firms.
Karnataka, Maharashtra and Kerala were found to have the most innovation potentiality, while Chandigarh, Nagaland and Meghalaya had the least.
The report highlights a few concerns and hindrances faced by firms to increase innovation. Availability of skilled manpower is the most important problem for 88% of the companies. Poor access to market information and availability of information technology follow closely.
As many as 53% of the innovative firms do not employ any scientist or engineers. On an average scientists and engineers make up about 7% of the workforce. The rubber and plastics sector is an exception, where scientists and engineer make up as high as 24% of the workforce.
“So far the National Innovation System is concerned it has been seen that accessing institutional facilities for technological support to innovation is quite high in a few states, like,Assam, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya etc. But for states like Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu—states that are known to be innovation leaders—have poor records in accessing institutional support system for technological knowledge and information," the report said.
“The report details an exhaustive survey, and one aspect of value is about the barriers to innovation," said K. Vijay Raghavan, secretary, department of science and technology. He added that the barriers noted in the survey including government regulatory requirements followed by established players in the market, and innovation cost for product, process and alternative material, were concerns that needed to be addressed.
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