Published 01-05-2011
Keywords
- innovation,
- competitiveness,
- small and medium-sized enterprises,
- European Innovation Scoreboard,
- successful SMEs
Abstract
The innovation performance of Hungary is below the EU27 average, and the fallback is especially considerable in case of small and medium sized enterprises. Having a look at the European Innovation Scoreboard it is clearly seen that Hungary is lagging behind most of the EU member states in several important indicators concerning innovation achievement. The paper intends to search into the cause of this phenomenon through analyzing trends of certain elements of innovation performance and also the practice of Hungarian SMEs.
The study consists of two main parts: The (1) trend analysis based on EIS database presents Hungarian achievement and also the tendency of the most important indicators of innovation performance especially emphasizing the quality of human resource, the firm activities in innovation and the output of the innovation performance in comparison with other European countries. Based on (2) field research the study also analyses a few Hungarian small and medium sized companies’ innovation performance, searching for motivating and discouraging features in the Hungarian economic, political and social circumstances. Considering the results of the research the paper draws a conclusion and makes proposals for the Hungarian decision makers in order to improve innovation performance in the SME sector.