Innovation drops in the Romanian economy by 7.9 pct in 2012-2014

The weight of Romanian enterprises that introduced or implemented new or significantly improved products, processes and organizational or marketing methods, in the 2012-2014 period was 12.8 percent, registering a fall of 7.9 percent compared to 2010-2012, according to provisional results from the National Institute for Statistics (INS).

Out of the innovative companies, 6.3 percent applied only organizational or marketing methods, while 3.5 percent introduced or implemented only new or significantly improved products and/or processes, says INS. Out of the total number of companies, 3 percent introduced new products and/or processes and new or significantly improved organizational and/or marketing methods.

Compared to the previous period of analysis 2010-2012, the weight of innovators decreased in two of the three categories in 2012-2014. The weight of the companies that implemented new or significantly improved organizational and/or marketing methods decreased by 8.1 percent, while the weight of innovators that introduced both products and/or processes and organization and/or marketing methods decreased by 1.4 percent. At the same time, if in the 2010-2012 period the weight of enterprises with innovative products and/or processes was 1.9 percent, in 2012-2014 an increase of 1.6 percent was registered, detailed INS.

In the 2012-2014 period, large enterprises with 250 employees and over saw more innovation levels than small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with 26.9 percent of the large enterprises being innovative while onl12.2 percent of SMEs were. Compared to 2010-2012, the weight of innovative large enterprises dropped by 13.2 percent, the same downward trend being registered for SMEs with a drop of 7.6 percent.

There was also a decrease in the innovation potential of enterprises in both the industry and services economic sectors for the 2012-2014 period compared to 2010-2012. In the industry sector, the decrease was of 9.8 percent, from 22 percent to 12.6 percent, while in the services sector there was a small fall of 5.7 percent, from 18.8 percent in 2010-2012 to 13.1 percent in 2012-2014.

Nevertheless, compared to 2010-2012, there was better cooperation between the companies, with the weight of innovative companies that cooperated doubling both in the industry and the services sectors, according to INS. Thus, 15.4 percent of the number of innovative enterprises cooperated in order to achieve new or significantly improved products or process. Cooperation among innovative companies in the industry sector was more active than in the services sector, with a weight of 17.0 percent for the first compared to 13.9 percent for the second.

In August 2015, Romania ranked 28th in EU Member States’ Innovation Performance, lagging behind Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Croatia, according to the Collaborative Innovation Report conducted by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with A.T. Kearney.