saturs - rpiva

VIKTORIE KLÍMOVÁ, VLADIMÍR ZÍTEK
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
INNOVATION PERFORMANCE OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
SUMMARY
Introduction. Innovations are considered as the main factor of competitiveness increasing,
but for improving of competitiveness it is also necessary to evaluate the innovation
performance.
The Aim of the Study. To evaluate the innovation performance of the Czech Republic, namely
on the national and regional level.
Materials and methods. The article is based on the results of the European Innovation
Scoreboard which is annually published by the European Commission and on the results of
Czech statistical survey on innovations which is carried out every two years in accordance
with methodology of Oslo Manual.
Main results. The Czech Republic is moderate innovator with innovation performance below
the EU27 average. The Czech Republic is doing well especially in the dimension Economic
effects, but on the contrary, it is doing poorly in the dimensions Finance and support and
Throughputs. The Czech Republic has below-average share of innovative firms. The share of
innovative enterprises is higher in manufacturing than in services and it is increasing with
size of the firms. It is possible to say that the cost factors are the biggest barriers for Czech
innovative enterprises.
Conclusions. The Czech Republic should attend its attention to support of cooperation, risk
capital and patenting. But the public support should be precisely evaluated.
Keywords: Innovation performance, evaluation, scoreboard, survey
INTRODUCTION
After the access to the EU Czech firms have to (as well as enterprises in all new
member states) compete on single European market which is characterized by high freedom
and thus by more severe competition. Furthermore, in existing global world the enterprises
have face competition from other countries. Low-cost strategy isn’t sustainable in future, it is
necessary to use so competition advantages as innovation ability of enterprises, qualification
and mobility of human resources, research and technology.
Innovations are considered as the main factor of increasing of competitiveness of
regions, national economics as well as of supranational corporations. One of the first authors
who connected economic growth and business cycles with innovations was J. A. Schumpeter,
Austrian-American economist. In his book “The theory of economic development” (originally
in 1912) he considered the innovations to being the critical dimension of economic change.
He also proclaimed that the innovations cause "creative destruction" in economics and
consequently it results in economic growth (Schumpeter, 1987). Contemporary theories
concerned with factors of competitiveness in developed countries connect their competitive
advantage primarily with conditions for development of innovations in businesses. A higher
level of innovations also brings a higher added value of products and therefore a higher
growth of the living standard (Kučera, Pazour, 2009). Up-to-date innovation systems leave
the linear concept of innovations, where the research and development have to be at the
beginning of the innovation process, and convert to interactive concepts of innovations. These
new concepts say that innovations are results of interactions among individual participants of
the innovation process and new knowledge (research and development) can enter into this
process during any of its phases (Lundval, 1992). The innovations attract attention of
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