The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed new aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship and the resilience of SMEs in the conditions of individual countries. This empirical study contributes to entrepreneurship sustainability literature and business resilience literature by estimating the impact of various utilized internal crisis management tools and state compensation measures on retaining the pre-crisis levels of employment after two waves of the pandemic on the conditions of a V4 country. The study adopts an econometric approach towards assessing the influence of key factors of mitigating the problems caused by the pandemic, and the results suggest a crucial role of digitalization, internal policies optimizing variable costs, and utilization of direct governmental supportive measures to compensate for restrictions in force for employment retention in knowledge-intensive SMEs. According to the results, knowledge-intensive SMEs appears to have increased resilience towards economic shocks due to the capability to swiftly change the management of ventures to adapt to a crisis.

This paper investigates how universities affect formation of new knowledge intensive ventures in conditions of post-socialistic country of Eastern Europe, depending on character of university spill-overs. Using tools of spatial econometry, we investigate how graduates rollout by universities and knowledge spill-overs on basis of interpersonal relationships between entrepreneurs and senior academic researchers determines emergence of knowledge intensive ventures in Slovakia, while we distinguish between total number of knowledge intensive firms (KIF), knowledge intensive manufacturing ventures (KIM), knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) and knowledge intensive services (KIS). Our estimates of spatial Durbin models indicate that even in conditions of country that lacks universities carrying out top-excellent research, university spill-overs affects formation of knowledge intensive ventures, but only in case of services, while spill-overs in form of graduate rollout are significantly localized.

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This exploratory review of the literature provides a comprehensive overview of the settings that are available to the planner when managing participatory strategic planning of spatial socio-economic development on the local level. We contextualize individual potential configurations of participation in local development planning practice, documented in a number of case studies from different parts of the world, in order to reflect the multidimensionality of the participatory planning process. These reflections are used to build a participation plan model, which aimed to help local planners, especially local governments, to optimize the participation of local stakeholders, according to the specifics of the local environment. The paper evaluates the options of planners to manage the participation from perspective of the organization of participation, the determination of its scope, selection of stakeholders, methods and techniques of communication, decision-making and visualization, as well as the deployment of resources, or the possibility of promotion and dissemination of information. As a practical implication of this review, we compose a participation matrix, which is intended to be an auxiliary tool for planners to establish own locally-specific participation plans and that can serve as tool for education, or life-long learning of planners.

Purpose: The aim of the contribution is to evaluate the importance of domestic and foreign collaborative ties between knowledge-intensive SMEs and knowledge sources for the creation of product and service innovations which we differentiate according to the spatial level of novelty. Methodology/Approach: In order to test the validity of the hypotheses which were justified in the context of previous research we adopt an econometric approach and specifically, due to the nature of the dependent variable, the logistic regression. Findings: The results support the hypotheses that the determinants of innovation in SMEs vary in case of innovations with different level of novelty. Open innovation practices are crucial rather for SMEs delivering innovations of products and services novel on national and international markets. Research Limitation/Implication: The research does not reflect the frequency of innovative products and services at the enterprise level as well as the impact of new products and services on turnover. Originality/Value of paper: In particular, the study brings new insights into the determinants of product innovation of a lower degree of novelty applied in local and regional markets which can be an important source of development for low-density economies.