COLLABORATION FOR INNOVATION IN SMALL CEE COUNTRIES

The innovative environment and its elements are crucial determinants of the innovation activity of enterprises in developed economies. Also public authorities also focus on innovation environment development, which are being implemented with financial support from public budgets. In developed countries, these incentives are geared to promoting cooperation, as it is a key element of any innovative environment. In Western economies, a certain Western innovation model is being implemented. However, its application in the CEE countries is significantly limited due to the specific characteristics of these economies. Therefore, the main focus of the paper is to examine the impact of cooperation with different types of innovation partners on product innovation performance of manufacturing companies in small CEE countries.
In the first phase of the research, CIS data (from Eurostat) and its own regression models identify the types of co-operating partners (private and public) that have the most significant impact on product innovation (researched separately in selected CEE countries). In the second part, the model is constructed so as to identify the predictors, the variables having a significant impact on product innovations across countries (using a merged dataset from all analysed CEE countries). To expand knowledge about innovation and business performance, three variables were added to the model as control variables: market orientation, company ownership, and public funding. The combined dataset of the five CEE countries was again used to examine the impact of different types of co-operating partners on product innovation through a binary logistic regression model.
Findings of logistic regression are encouraging; pointing out that the transition to a market economy with a delay has also encouraged the establishment of relationships between firms and private institutions in favour of boosting innovation performance. In doing so, CEE countries are gradually approaching the behaviour of firms in Western European countries.