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

1 Introduction
This thematic report is produced by the “Information Office of the Steering Platform
on Research for Western Balkan Countries” and reviews the situation of Innovation
Infrastructures in Croatia.
The report is based upon desk research, interviews and questionnaires with main
stakeholders.
The objective of this study is to enhance our understanding of the national innovation
system in Croatia. An overview of the situation as regards “Innovation Infrastructures”
such as clusters, technology and innovation centres, technological and science
parks, business-start-up centres/ technology incubators and some further related
organizations is given. The general environment is described as well as important
strategic documents and the main programmes and instruments for support. The
report concludes with a list and description of the main infrastructures.
The report was compiled in summer 2007.
1.1 General Environment for Setting Up Innovation Infrastructures
This first section deals with rules and regulations, describes the national framework
and the specific funds available.
The science-industry and business environment in Croatia has significantly improved
over past few years and as indicated in the World Bank report “Doing business
2006”, Croatia has become one of the top ten country reformers in the world.
Croatia 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. Elsewhere, to a large extent, services are provided
through donor projects or private sector initiatives and are fragmentary and often
isolated from each other.
The joint report of EC and OECD on the implementation of the European Charter for
Small Enterprises finds that Croatia has taken a general lead in the overall
environment for SMEs and is ahead of the other Western Balkan economies in the
dimensions associated with technological development, the promotion of
competitiveness and gearing up business for work in the information society where
online access and information portals offer new potential to reduce the burdens on
entrepreneurs (OECD and EC, 2007).
Croatia has the most advanced and formalised business simplification strategies. The
Government of Croatia launched the “Regulatory Guillotine initiative” HITROREZ,
which began in September 2006 as a part of the hitro.hr programme. The initiative is
page 5/HRV