The number of companies developing innovation activities has been decreasing since 2018, with only 42.5% of companies presenting innovation activities in the period between 2022 and 2024, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE).
In the period between 2018 and 2020, around 48% of companies carried out innovation activities, with the number falling to 44.7% in the period between 2020 and 2022 and then to 42.5% from 2022 to 2024.
These activities include complete product or process innovation, ongoing activities until the end of 2024, abandoned or suspended innovation activities, research and development (R&D) activities developed internally or contracting R&D to other companies (including your group) or to public or private research organizations.
In the same period (2022-2024), 24.3% of companies introduced product innovation (goods and/or services) and 37.6% process innovation.
Compared to the period 2020-2022, there is an increase of 1.7 percentage points (pp) in product innovation and a decrease of 2.8 pp in process innovation.
According to INE, the global reduction in the proportion of companies with innovation activities compared to 2018-2020 (-5.5 pp) “may be associated, among other factors, with the exceptional context of the covid-19 pandemic”.
“In the periods 2018-2020 and 2020-2022, many companies adjusted their internal processes to respond to the demands imposed by the pandemic, which contributed to a significant increase in process innovation”, reads the institute’s document.
By number of workers, it was found that 78.7% of companies with 250 or more people and 41.7% of companies in the range of 10 to 249 employed people were innovative companies in the period between 2022 and 2024.
In the previous period the values were 79.1% and 43.9%, respectively.
By economic activity, the information and communication sector continued to present, proportionally, more innovative companies (68.9%), followed by financial services (59.7%), commerce (45.4%) and industry and energy (45.1%).
Conversely, agriculture and fishing (31.7%), construction and real estate activities (33.4%) and transport and storage (33.6%) were the sectors that recorded the lowest percentages.
In 2024, 14.9% of companies’ revenue was the result of the introduction of new or improved products (-0.3 pp compared to 2022), totaling 70.2 billion euros (11.8 billion euros more compared to 2022).
The results of this report come from the Community Innovation Survey 2024 (CI 2024), carried out by the General Directorate of Education and Science Statistics (DGEEC) and the National Statistics Institute (INE).
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