Research of Innovation Activities in Slovene Companies

Abstract

In a rapidly changing global environment, innovation is one of the foundations of the competitiveness of enterprises. In creating an innovative economy of the country, it is important that companies constantly systematically develop new technologies, innovative products, new processes, and constantly introduce new business models, manage new business relationships and markets. The mobility of their investment in research and development may be affected by access to markets, the existence of markets for new products and services and markets that are friendly to innovation. It is also important to improve and introduce incremental improvements that are not “necessary” substantial investments in order to maintain and increase innovation activity. In addition, it is important how and to what extent company employees influence innovation. We wish to emphasise that innovation is a broad concept, which is important at the national, regional, company or individual level, and goes beyond the dimensions of product development. We are interested in what stimulates invention and how innovation activities are planned in a company. For this purpose, we conducted a quantitative research and explored the different aspects of innovation in Slovene companies.