Proceedings of The 5th international conference on knowledge and innovation in Engineering, Science and Technology
Year: 2019
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/5th.kiconf.2019.06.300
Business Clusters: How to Better Support Problematic Regions in Slovakia
doc. Ing. Marek Jemala, Ph.D., doc. Ing. Renata Nováková, PhD, and doc. Ing. Jana Šujanová, CSc
ABSTRACT:
Changes in business strategies, changes in investment, organizational arrangements, production programs, and access to innovation processes were primarily influenced by nature and change in the demand-side of the market mechanism in business history. However, there were many exceptions based on the radical innovations of companies such as Eastman Kodak, Nokia, Apple, Walt Disney, Universal Music, Mozilla, etc. Technologies often play an important role in radical innovations. Radical innovations (especially platforms) have played an important role in the economic and social development of regions and countries since the 17th century and the First industrial revolution. However, incremental innovations often bring cumulative gains to the effectiveness of business activities, and thus better support for the socio-economic aspects of a given region or economy. However, according to the findings, support for innovation and networking of firms for joint open innovation is often lacking in solving crisis situations of troubled businesses or in developing less economically successful regions. The outputs of this research include several statistical information and scientific findings based on the questionnaires evaluated, as well as a description of selected shortcomings and recommendations in the area of strategic and innovative management of problem firms based on an expert study. Quantitative and qualitative research was carried out in the two most problematic regions of the Slovak Republic, in Banská Bystrica and Košice regions in 2017-2019. In both regions, 500 problem companies (250:250) were analysed, which had at least two negative economic outcomes in the last three years and were forced to lay off employees.
Keywords: Problem companies; Innovation; Innovation management; Business alliances; Clusters.