engleski

Innovation strategy for the Knowledge Economy: The Case of Croatia

It is now widely accepted that one of the main sources of economic growth lies in the successful embodiment of new knowledge about product, support systems within organizations. What complicates this new knowledge is that there is difference between an organizations' ability to learn and its ability to apply learning efficiently and effectively. After a short introduction to the theoretical foundations of innovation and knowledge, Section 2 analyses the level of innovativeness of the companies in Croatia. Our analysis are based on the information we collected from a questionnaire given to the Croatian companies. In this paper the results of inovative practices in Croatian export companies are presented. The survey investigates innovative activity in last five years. The main findings from this survey are that approximately one third of the companies registers patents and apply innovation. However, the number of innovations per company is rather small. Improve product quality, introduction of new technology/equipment, and increase of the market share are the most important motives for innovations. Increase in specialization and production is the most often benefit of the innovative activity. The survey reveals the strong correlation between total revenue of investments in innovative activity and between total revenue and the number of registered innovations. Companies from manufacture of electrical and optical equipment ; electricity, gas and water supply ; and manufacture of machinery and equipment are particulary active in innovative activities. Building on analysis of the changes taking place in the R&D management this paper in conclusion indicates Opportunities and Challenges and offers some options for solving the gap of tacitness asset specifity, complexity, cultural distance and organizational distance between developed and emerging countries like Croatia.

innovation; R&D; companies; Croatia

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