Callaghan Innovation — Independent Evaluation Finds New Zealand's R&D Grants Move the Needle on Innovation

Callaghan Innovation is a Crown entity established in 2013 to support New Zealand businesses' R&D and commercialisation, administering R&D grants, a 15% R&D tax incentive, technology incubators and advisory "navigator" services across the manufacturing and technology sectors.
In its Research Note 2017/5 ("The impact of R&D grants on the performance of New Zealand firms," October 2017), the New Zealand Productivity Commission's Simon Wakeman used Statistics NZ's Longitudinal Business Database and propensity-score matching to compare grant recipients with similar non-recipient firms. The study found grant receipt raised the probability of introducing a new-to-the-world or new-to-the-firm good or service by around 10 percentage points and a new process by about 5 points, and roughly doubled the probability of patenting, from about 1% to 2%.
Callaghan Innovation continues to publish annual reports (most recently for FY2023/24) tracking customer revenue, export and productivity trends, though these self-reported outcome trends are less rigorously verified than the 2017 matched-sample study.

Read the full analysis: https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/