Innovation in the Exporting and Importing & Non-Exporting in the Automobiles sector firms- 2022

The Innovation and Technology Centre (ITC) of the Lahore School of Economics conducted a survey in 2018/2019 to observe the growing trends in innovation and technology upgradation in the exporting and non-exporting firms from the textile and readymade garment sectors in Lahore. The purpose of this survey was to observe the extent, quality and impact of innovation activities on the performance and profitability of the innovating exporting and non-exporting firms. The survey also looked at the barriers faced by the innovating exporting and non-exporting firms in this sector. The data consisted of 125 firms involved in manufacturing readymade garments and other textiles, including 87 exporting and 38 non-exporting firms, collected during the period of September 2018 to December 2018. In the surveyed exporting firms, 40% of those firms were selling 100% of their output abroad, with majority of them exporting to Europe followed by worldwide.

Looking at the results of innovation, most of automobile firms revealed that their quality of output improved, they didn’t have to retrain their employees to adopt new technology, their revenues increased, their cost of production decreased, they didn’t have face resistance from their employees while introducing innovations and lastly the prices of their product remained mostly unchanged as the result of innovation.

The two greatest barriers faced while trying to perform innovation were lack of financing and lack of innovation opportunities. It can be concluded that more incentives for innovations could be given by providing more sources of funding for the innovating firms in the form of aid from the government and with the assistance of financial institutions.

Link to the Report: https://itc.lahoreschool.edu.pk/downloads/07_Innovation%20Report%202022%20V1.pdf