Title: Innovation activities in services: regional findings from the Czech Republic

Authors: Kateřina Jiřinová ; Karel Koliš

Addresses: Department of Management, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague W. Churchilla 4, Prague 3, Czech Republic ' Department of Management, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Economics, Prague W. Churchilla 4, Prague 3, Czech Republic

Abstract: Innovation is the driving force of the competitiveness. At the same time, services are a significant contributor to GDP in all developed economies. Therefore, it is interesting to map out innovative activities in this area. Our interest focuses on a specific area - open innovation, problems and trends in innovation. The paper and further research describe a comprehensive view on the innovation activities of small and medium-sized companies in the Czech Republic. There are two views included - the company size view and the type of customer view. The research was divided into two parts - quantitative and qualitative research. The results of quantitative research provide the analysis of a questionnaire survey among 1,701 service companies. The main findings describe where companies find their ideas for innovation, who is involved in the innovation process and testing. Qualitative research complements these findings by in-depth interviews with experts on the topic of innovation problems and trends.

Keywords: innovation; services; service innovation; open innovation; Czech Republic; problems; data; innovation activities; regional findings; B2B; B2C; micro companies; SMEs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIR.2017.084430

International Journal of Business Innovation and Research, 2017 Vol.13 No.3, pp.388 - 401

Received: 23 Mar 2015
Accepted: 17 Jun 2015
Published online: 07 Jun 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article