The impact of persistent innovation on business growth

Date published:
3 December 2018

This paper assesses the relationship between Australian business innovation persistence and growth performance between 2007 and 2014. During this period, high sales or employment growth businesses accounted for over 80% of growth in Australia. High growth start-up small to medium sized enterprises made a disproportionately high contribution.

Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Business Longitudinal Analytical Data Environment (BLADE), we:

  • establish the contribution of high growth businesses to the Australian economy
  • test whether persistent business innovation creates performance advantages over non-innovator businesses and less persistent innovators.

Authors: Luke Hendrickson, David Taylor, Lyndon Ang, Kay Cao, Thai Nguyen and Franklin Soriano.