engleski

Croatian innovation policy meets reality

Since 2000 Croatia made significant efforts in establishing the national innovation system and introducing innovation policy as a specific policy framework for accelerating transition of Croatia toward knowledge-based economy. This orientation has been additionally boosted by the Croatia’ s membership talks with the European Union (EU) that brought Lisbon and Barcelona targets into strategic policy agendas shaped by the integration processes and pressure to withstand competition of European market. Although Croatia has no concrete “ National Lisbon Plan” there is mix of policies and actions that should move Croatia’ s orientation towards Lisbon goal. In this context an overview of the Croatian national innovation system (CNIS) and current innovation policy (programs, actors, and policy documents) is presented. Although the aforementioned actions provide a platform for certain satisfaction with the science and innovation policy, it is estimated that CNIS suffers some serious difficulties to serve as a tool for structural adjustment to knowledge economy. To support the thesis the results of the pilot benchmark analysis of the Croatian NIS and NIS of EU countries are presented. The results reveal that supply side of the Croatian NIS is rather satisfactory especially in comparison with the New member states while demand side and absorption capacities are rather weak. The paper concludes that current narrowly-defined innovation policy concentrated primarily on supply side should be defined in a more realistic way to respond to the specific needs of the Croatian stage of development in order to overcome the critical points of the CNIS. Such a policy assumes both, further development of scientific research in order to meet EU standards and shifting the attention from science towards the whole process of innovation. The dissemination channels, absorption and performing capabilities of companies, interaction among sectors and education of labor force are identified as priorities. Socio-cultural inertia and lack of policy learning that are perceived as the main obstacles to establishing an integrative and pro-active innovation policy are also briefly discussed.

innovation policy

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