Innovation indicators in the context of Romanian SMEs: A research agenda

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the theoretical connection between key terms such as innovation indicators and entrepreneurship, highlighting the main trends of innovative activities and practices in the context of Romanian small and medium enterprises. Innovation management has gained an increased interest nowadays since it provides tools for creating competitive advantage and economic growth for enterprises. In this sense, at global and European Union level, innovation indicators have been identified in order to measure the efficiency of innovation. In addition, innovation and entrepreneurship have been connected by scholars, since their application provides business opportunities. Starting from the Europe 2020 Strategy that has innovation as a pillar for reaching economic growth, the present study provides a descriptive analysis of the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2019 report, followed by a comparative analysis of the European Innovation Scoreboard reports published in the last 5 years. The present paper contributes to the existing knowledge regarding the actual application of innovation indicators in Romanian SMEs. The paper provides an answer to the research questions, which focus on depicting what are the exact innovation indicators that characterize the activities of Romanian SME and what are the trends and weaknesses in the actual business environment in terms of innovative endeavors. This paper provides some recommendations in terms of improvement of innovative efforts for the enterprises that operate in the Romanian market.