Survey of Advanced Technology, 2022
Released: 2023-07-28
The adoption of advanced technologies is of keen interest to policy-makers and the general public because it can be pivotal to an enterprise's productivity, competitiveness and innovation.
In 2022, 62.1% of enterprises in sectors covered by the 2022 Survey of Advanced Technology (SAT) adopted at least one type of advanced technology, led by enterprises in utilities (80.5%), professional, scientific and technical services (75.2%), finance and insurance (75.1%) and manufacturing (74.9%).
Regional advanced technology adoption rates were around 5 percentage points above or below the national average (62.1%), with Ontario's adoption rate (66.2%) being the highest, followed by Western Canada and the North (61.4%), Quebec (58.3%) and the Atlantic provinces (56.7%).
Of the 15 advanced technology domains measured in the 2022 SAT, advanced design and information control technologies (35.0%) and clean technologies (33.4%) were the most commonly adopted.
Advanced design and information control technologies help enterprises create and refine visual and functional aspects of products, services and systems and manage and control their data and information. Within this group, customer relationship management software (23.1%) and enterprise resource planning (12.0%) technologies were the most commonly adopted.
Clean technologies are processes, devices or applications designed to mitigate the effects of human activity on the environment or promote the sustainability of ecosystems. Waste management, reduction or recycling (26.9%) and air and environmental protection or remediation (10.8%) were the most commonly adopted clean technologies.
While artificial intelligence, robotics and blockchain may be seen as disruptive, the proportion of enterprises that adopted these types of technologies was comparatively low; it was 3.1% for artificial intelligence, 2.1% for robotics and 0.7% for blockchain.
Among the enterprises that adopted at least one advanced technology, 57.3% were innovative enterprises (they introduced an improved or new product onto the market or implemented an improved or a new business process). In comparison, 40.9% of enterprises that did not adopt any advanced technologies were innovative.
Chart 1
Rate of advanced technology adoption by technology domain, 2022
Chart 2
Rate of adoption of advanced technologies by enterprises within each sector, 2022
Obstacles and disincentives to advanced technology adoption
The top three obstacles reported by enterprises that did not adopt advanced technologies were related to low returns on investment or long payback periods from such investments (40.6%), recruiting skilled staff (36.7%) and difficulty to integrate new advanced technologies with existing systems (34.7%).
Difficulties in recruiting skilled staff (51.5%) were more prevalent among enterprises that adopted advanced technologies than those that did not, presumably because they needed more highly skilled staff. The next most commonly reported obstacles by enterprises that adopted advanced technologies were challenges in determining the impact of new technologies on their business (39.8%) and difficulties in integrating new advanced technologies within existing systems (39.7%).
Note to readers
The Survey of Advanced Technology is an occasional survey that collects information on the extent to which Canadian enterprises use advanced technologies. Just over 13,300 enterprises were selected from a survey population of around 170,000 enterprises. The survey was stratified by industrial grouping, region and three enterprise size classes based on the number of employees per enterprise.
An advanced technology is one that performs a new function or significantly improves an existing function performed by a more commonly used technology. For the purposes of this survey, 50 advanced technologies were selected and divided into 15 distinct technology domains:
- Advanced material handling, supply chain and logistics technologies;
- Advanced business intelligence technologies;
- Advanced design and information control technologies;
- Advanced processing and fabrication technologies;
- Clean technologies;
- Additional advanced technologies;
- Geomatic or geospatial technologies;
- Nanotechnologies;
- Biotechnologies;
- Artificial Intelligence technologies;
- Blockchain or distributed ledger technologies;
- Internet of Things;
- Robotics;
- Virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality technologies;
- Advanced medical devices.
The survey collects information on various subjects, including the extent to which the objectives of the adoption of advanced technology were met, the significance of obstacles to adoption, the measures taken to overcome obstacles, the investment in advanced technology and source of financing this investment, the innovation rate (measured by the proportion of enterprises that introduce a new or improved product onto the market and/or bring into use a new or improved business process), and the demographic characteristics of the main decision makers leading the enterprise.
Contact information
For more information, or to enquire about the concepts, methods or data quality of this release, contact us (toll-free 1-800-263-1136; 514-283-8300; infostats@statcan.gc.ca) or Media Relations (statcan.mediahotline-ligneinfomedias.statcan@statcan.gc.ca).
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