Product and process innovations: How are they defined? How are they quantified?

This paper considers the alternative meanings attributed to the terms product and process innovation, and demonstrates, on the basis of the SPRU database on innovations in Great Britain, how the total number of product and process innovations varies according to the definition adopted. Only 3.1% of the innovations monitored can be univocally labelled as either products or processes, whilst as many as 96.9% of them fall into a grey zone. The authors conclude that these terms, although useful tools of analysis, should be defined more precisely in the studies of the economics of technological change. © 1995 Akadémiai Kiadó.