The key contribution of this document is a list of potential determinants of SMEs’ innovativeness related to life cycle, sector and region of activity, and these are presented in the concluding section of this report. Following introduction, the second chapter synthesizes knowledge and reviews literature on enterprise life cycle (and related features) and its relations to SME’s R&D intensity, innovative efforts, results and performance.
The third section presents innovation cycles and impact of innovativeness, including the impact of innovation cycles on SMEs’ performance and impact of innovativeness on productivity and growth.
The project partners’ country profiles are described in chapter 4, using Eurostat and national statistical offices’ data. Paul Romer (1986) posed that ‘technological change is the result of the intentional actions of people, such as research and development’.
As it is individuals that are effectively the drivers behind innovative efforts, norms and values, and other behavioural aspects are key. Therefore, socio-cultural characteristic of partner nations and regions are presented in section 5. Finally, section 6 concludes with a broad and complex set of potential determinants of firms’ innovativeness.
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