Barriers to Innovation Activities from the Perspective of Non- Innovative Enterprises in The European Union Countries

Abstract

The identification of barriers to innovation activities is of significant importance in the proper climate development for innovation. In the course of this process, it should be remembered that the perception of factors hampering or preventing the implementation of innovation activities depends on the characteristics of enterprises. The heterogeneity of perception is influenced by, e.g., enterprise size, the history of its operations, development strategy, the entrepreneur’s country of origin, the degree of innovation as well as the division into innovative and non-innovative entities. The latter should remain the subject of special interest, because the identified barriers determine their resignation from innovation activities. Therefore, the adopted research goals focused on identifying the key barriers to innovation activities among non-innovative enterprises in the European Union, the classification of countries regarding the similarities of factors determining the resignation from such activities and determining correlations between the indications to these factors and innovation activities in individual countries. This study was focused on verifying the hypothesis adopting that the perception of significant barriers to innovative activity by a wide range of non-innovative enterprises translates into the low intensity of innovative processes. The research results from the Community Innovation Survey (2016) and the European Innovation Scoreboard 2017 served as the information basis for the conducted analyses. The multi-dimensional statistical analysis methods, including data classification methods were used in the research.