Product innovation is unevenly distributed across industries. In the United States, 9.8% of 4,937,279 in-scope companies reported product innovation during 2020–22, while the rate was 14.3% for manufacturing and 9.6% for nonmanufacturing. Internationally, the OECD found much higher variation in the share of enterprises introducing a new or improved product or business process, and Eurostat measured €725.9 billion in innovative-product turnover among EU small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 2022.
Contents
- Overall product innovation rates
- Manufacturing by industry
- Design-intensive goods
- New-to-market innovation
- Services and distribution
- Turnover and international context
Overall product innovation rates
The U.S. product-innovation rate changed across the reported years. The rate was 19.1% in 2018, 10.9% in 2019, 9.4% in 2021, and 9.8% in 2022. These figures come from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), and the measurement years should not be treated as a single continuous annual series without accounting for the reporting period and survey context. NCSES Table 48, “Product innovating companies, by industry: 2019–22”
For the combined 2020–22 period, 9.8% of U.S. companies reported product innovation. The same NCSES release reported that 22.9% of companies had any product or business-process innovation. Product innovation is therefore a narrower measure than innovation activity overall: a company can appear in the broader measure because it introduced a business-process innovation without reporting a product innovation. NCSES Table 22, “Product innovating companies, by industry: 2020–22”
The U.S. comparison between manufacturing and nonmanufacturing is compact but meaningful:
| U.S. company group | Product innovation rate | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| All in-scope companies | 9.8% | 2020–22 |
| Manufacturing | 14.3% | 2020–22 |
| Nonmanufacturing | 9.6% | 2020–22 |
| New-to-market product innovation, all companies | 3.7% | 2020–22 |
The 3.7% new-to-market figure is a subset-oriented measure: it identifies companies reporting products new to the market, rather than every company reporting a product that was new or improved for the company. NCSES Table 26, “Companies with new-to-market product innovation, by industry: 2020–22”
Manufacturing by industry
Manufacturing product innovation rates ranged from 7.1% to 29.0% across the selected U.S. industries in 2020–22. The highest reported rate in this group was among soap, cleaning-compound, and toilet-preparation manufacturers, at 29.0%. Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturers reported 24.3%, while chemical manufacturers reported 23.7%. Beverage and tobacco product companies reported 21.7%.
Other manufacturing rates were lower but still varied by product category. Plastics and rubber-product manufacturers reported 16.7%, and food-product companies reported 16.5%. Textile, apparel, and leather product companies reported 12.8%. Paper-product companies reported 10.8%, while printing and related-support companies reported 10.3%. Wood-product companies reported 7.1%, the lowest rate among the manufacturing categories listed here. All figures refer to U.S. companies during 2020–22 and are reported by NCSES Table 22.
These rates describe the share of companies reporting product innovation, not the number of products launched, the revenue from those products, or the commercial success of an individual design. A higher industry rate consequently indicates broader company participation in product innovation, while it does not by itself measure the scale or quality of each innovation.
Design-intensive goods
Several design-intensive goods sectors recorded rates above the overall U.S. company rate of 9.8% in 2020–22. Navigational, measuring, electromedical, and control-instrument manufacturers reported the highest rate in this group, at 33.3%. Communications-equipment manufacturers reported 28.8%, and computer and electronic-product manufacturers reported 28.4%.
Machinery manufacturers reported product innovation at 20.6%. Electrical-equipment, appliance, and component manufacturers reported 22.4%, while transportation-equipment manufacturers reported 21.4%. Within transportation equipment, automobile, body, trailer, and parts manufacturers reported 22.6%, compared with 14.8% for aerospace-product and parts manufacturers.
The selected consumer and medical categories were more varied. Medical-equipment and supplies manufacturers reported 15.6%, while furniture and related-product manufacturers reported 9.4%. The furniture figure was close to, but slightly below, the 9.8% rate for all in-scope U.S. companies. The industry-level estimates are from NCSES Table 22.
For readers working in product design, the comparison shows why a single “design industry” average can obscure important differences. Electronics, communications equipment, and specialized instruments had reported product-innovation rates near or above 28%, whereas furniture was below 10% in the same U.S. measurement period. These are industry reporting rates, not claims that design effort alone caused the differences.
New-to-market innovation
New-to-market product innovation is a more restrictive indicator than product innovation generally. In the United States, 3.7% of all companies reported new-to-market product innovation during 2020–22. Manufacturing companies reported a 6.5% rate, showing that new-to-market activity was more common in manufacturing than across all companies in the supplied NCSES measures. NCSES Table 26
The manufacturing breakdown also shows differences in how often companies reported market-new products:
- Navigational, measuring, electromedical, and control-instrument manufacturers: 20.0%.
- Computer and electronic-product manufacturers: 16.3%.
- Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturers: 14.9%.
- Chemical manufacturers: 13.1%.
- Machinery manufacturers: 10.5%.
- Food-product companies: 6.9%.
- Beverage and tobacco product companies: 6.6%.
- Textile, apparel, and leather product companies: 6.1%.
- Wood-product companies: 2.9%.
The contrast between general product innovation and new-to-market innovation is especially visible in the instrument sector: 33.3% of companies reported product innovation, while 20.0% reported new-to-market product innovation. For computer and electronic products, the corresponding rates were 28.4% and 16.3%. The two measures should be kept separate because a product may be new or improved for the company without being new to the market.
Services and distribution
Product innovation also appeared outside traditional manufacturing. Wholesale-trade companies reported an 11.9% product-innovation rate in 2020–22, and retail-trade companies reported 11.8%. Construction companies reported 5.4%, while transportation and warehousing companies reported 4.7%. These figures are from NCSES Table 22.
Information industries were more varied. Information companies overall reported a 20.4% product-innovation rate. Publishing companies reported 28.6%, software publishers reported 42.0%, and data-processing, hosting, and related-services companies reported 28.8% in 2020–22. The software-publisher figure was the highest among the service and distribution categories listed here. Product innovation in these sectors can include changes to digital products and services as measured by the underlying industry survey; the supplied figures do not establish that every innovation involved a physical product.
Specialized-design-services companies reported a product-innovation rate of 13.3% in 2022. This is a single-year figure, unlike the 2020–22 figures above, so it should not be read as directly equivalent to a three-year-period estimate. It comes from NCSES Table 48.
Turnover and international context
The OECD comparison places U.S. product-innovation rates alongside a broader indicator: the share of enterprises introducing at least one product or business-process innovation. Across the countries in the OECD comparison, the median share was close to 50% in 2020–22. Canada reported nearly three-quarters of enterprises introducing a new or improved product or business process, while Romania reported less than 10%. These international figures use a broader combined indicator and should not be compared directly with the U.S. product-only rate of 9.8%. OECD, “Business Innovation Statistics: Unpacking key trends and findings”
The OECD also reported that products introduced in the previous three years generated an average of 13% of business turnover among innovative enterprises. On average across OECD countries, products new to the market accounted for about one-third of that 13% innovative-product share. The figures are estimates for the 2020–22 period and describe turnover composition, not the percentage of companies innovating.
Eurostat provides a separate view of commercial scale for EU SMEs. Innovative products generated €725.9 billion in SME turnover in 2022, representing 8.8% of total EU SME turnover. At the regional level, 48 EU NUTS level 2 regions had an innovative-product turnover share above the 8.8% EU SME average, while 71 regions were below it. Eurostat, Regional yearbook 2025 edition
Country-level SME results also differed. German SMEs derived 5.3% of turnover from innovative products in 2022, and French SMEs derived 4.4%. These percentages are below the 8.8% EU SME average reported for innovative-product turnover, but they measure turnover shares and should not be interpreted as product-innovation participation rates.
Eurostat reported that innovation-active enterprises represented 53.3% of EU industry and 49.8% of core innovation services during 2020–22. In industry, Belgium recorded a 74.8% share of innovation-active enterprises, while Romania recorded 8.3%. The Eurostat measures are broader than product innovation alone, so they help describe the surrounding innovation environment rather than replace the product-specific U.S. rates.