S&T Country Report - Albania - WBC-INCO Net

3 Conclusions / Recommendations
Croatia is the leading performer among the Western Balkan countries in the overall
environment for SMEs, in innovation and technology centres and cooperation. The
country has a clear and well-structured national strategy for comprehensive business
support facilities, including incubation and strategies to improve the range and quality
of business support services. The policy framework is supported by a consistent
action plan and adequate budgetary resources. Services are provided through donor
projects or private sector initiatives and are often isolated from each other; therefore
the country should ensure more effective coordination, collaboration and information
exchange between financiers.
Croatian Government sees the development of clusters as crucial moment in
stimulating greater progress of small and medium enterprises; therefore Croatian
economic and regional policy supports formation and development of clusters via
special programmes. In 2006, the development of 18 clusters in six sectors (wood
and metal processing, food, textiles, printing and publishing and tourism) was
supported.
Technology/Innovation Centres are generally supported via the Technology
Infrastructure Development Programme (TehCro), which was initiated by the
Government with support from the World Bank. Unfortunately, the performance of
four established technology centres has not been ideal and there is a need for a
performance review to focus attention on their role in facilitating collaboration
between research and business.
There are three Technology and Science parks operating: in Zagreb (established as
the first park in Croatia), in Varaždin and in Kutina.
Croatia also has the most advanced business incubator programmes. There is a
national network of business incubators, as well as a national programme to support
their operation and to establish new ones. Even though there is a history of existence
of business incubators in Croatia (the first ones appeared in the mid 90’s), they are
not always focusing on innovation and high-quality services.
In Croatia, there is still a need for strong co-ordination of the whole agenda of
technological cooperation, intellectual property rights, business incubators, cluster
development, and skills development. This requires a high level of co-ordination
among government institutions, particularly among Ministries of Economy, Education
and Science, the private sector, universities and research institutes. As in the case of
competitiveness, governments should create the institutional setting to ensure that
information exchange and inter-agency co-ordination are regular and effective
(OECD and EC, 2007).
The national innovation system of Croatia is underdeveloped in comparison with all
member states of the European Union. Croatia is lagging behind in knowledge based
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