An analysis of innovation performance of the Western Balkan countries and the EU selective economies group

Abstract

First of all, the paper offers a theoretical explication of the importance of economic innovation for a country’s economic development. It further considers the metrics of the Global Innovation Index. By means of a box-plot diagram, the article explores the link between basic innovation performances (Global Innovation Index, Index Innovation Input and Index Innovation output) of the six Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro) and a group of six selected European Union economies in the neighbourhood (Austria, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia). The aim is to identify the existence of extreme values between the data that reveal the key innovation performance of the two groups including the description of the basic characteristics of the performances which have been examined

Knowledge economy readiness, innovativeness and competitiveness of the Western Balkan countries

“…The selected Western Balkans group included Croatia, as the relatively most innovative and most competitive country in this group, which became the member of the EU on 1 July 2013. Furthermore, the selected EU countries, with the exception of Austria and, to a certain extent, Slovenia, belong to the very bottom of the list of EU countries, judging by the criteria of innovativeness and competitiveness Cvetanović et al, 2013;Despotović, et al, 2014). This fact should be taken into account when making judgments about the perceived differences in relation to: knowledge economy readiness, increasing innovativeness, and improving competitiveness of the Western Balkans countries and the group of selected EU countries in their neighborhood .…”