Innovation is losing ground in Romanian companies, says National Institute of Statistics

Innovation in Romanian companies posted a decline between 2010- 2012, as compared to the two previous years, according to a survey of The National Institute of Statistics among players in the industry & services.

Only 4 out of 10 large companies and 2 out of 10 SMEs implemented a new or improved product, process, management or marketing method during this time.

It gets even worse, since the ratio of companies which posted no innovation at all hiked during this time by more than 10 percent, according to the institution.

“Preliminary results of the survey on innovation show that between 2010 and 2012, the percentage of companies that introduced or implemented significantly new or improved products, processes, management or marketing methods was 20.7 percent, representing a 10.1 percent decline compared to 2008- 2010. Out of these, 14.4 percent were companies that only implemented new management and marketing methods while 1.9 percent were companies that introduced or implemented only new or significantly improved products or processes. About 4.4 percent of companies have introduced both new products/processes as well as new or improved management/marketing methods,” according to a press release of the institution quoted by Mediafax newswire.

Companies with more than 250 employees were more innovating than SMEs whose team counts between 10 and 249 people. Thus, 40.1 percent of the large companies were innovative, representing a 16.3 percent drop compared to the two previous years, while only 19.8 percent of SMEs met this quality, corresponding to a 9.9 percent decline.

Both the industry & services saw sharp drops in the innovation potential. The industry lost 7.7 percent of its innovation potential, from 30.1 percent between 2008-2010 to 22.4 percent between 2010-2012. In the services sector, the drop was even sharper, reaching 12.9 percent, after declining from 31.7 percent between 2008-2010 to 18.8 percent between 2010- 2012.

Romanian companies are not cooperating enough for innovation purposes. Only 7.4 percent of companies that were deemed innovative had cooperated with a view to making new or improved products or operations.

In the industry, 9.1 percent of companies were more open to cooperation, while in the services sector only 5.1 percent did that between 2010 and 2012.

Otilia Haraga