Innovation Performance of the Slovak Republic and Romania

Inovačná výkonnosť Slovenskej republiky a Rumunska

Milan Fiľa, Jozef Kučera

In: Geografické informácie (Geographical Information), Ročník (Volume) 20, Číslo (Issue) 2, 2016, p. 70-81, ISSN 1337-9453

DOI: 10.17846/GI.2016.20.2.70-81

Abstract

Innovations play a central role of the knowledge economy (characterised by the production of goods and services with high added value) and it is also a key element of economic development and the driving force of the economic development. Countries with the most developed economies are characterised not only by more stable economy, higher standard of living but also by higher innovation performance in the comparison with other countries. However, the innovation performance (and its potential) differs significantly among the EU regions; especially we can see a great gap between the former EU members and those new ones from last decade. Slovak Republic and Romania are unfortunately still in the company of those EU member countries with low innovation performance. This situation is caused mainly by the weak support of research and development (mainly weak financial support) and inadequate support of innovation-friendly corporate environment, especially in the SMEs sector, which represents the backbone of each national economy. Not only public sector should take care about the whole R&D national investments. In developed economies, it is especially the private sector which invests into innovations the most so it is very important to support the innovation-friendly environment by the public authorities. Using statistical methods, the scientific article provides insight into the causal relationship to the development rate of the region measured in terms of GDP per capita and investments in R&D to indicate disparities in Slovakia and Romania (compared to the innovation leaders in EU/EU average) in the field of innovation performance.

Keywords: innovations, competitiveness, knowledge economy, corporate environment, SME

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