Entrepreneurship and Innovation Output in Central and Eastern European Countries

The necessity to improve the conditions for research and development conducting activities, under Europe 2020 Strategy, requires monitoring of European firms’ progress on the topic of innovation. All types of small and medium-sized businesses can innovate, especially those from high-tech sectors, with effects upon improving the European competitiveness level and addressing societal problems. In the case of Central and Eastern European countries, ensuring the innovation-driven competitiveness requires the exploitation of the active population’s entrepreneurial, creative and innovative features. In this context, the paper proposes a research model of the small and medium-sized firms’ entrepreneurial process in selected Central and Eastern European countries, according to their economic development stage and competitiveness level, leading to the quantitative identification of cause-effect relationships between entrepreneurship and innovation results.