Research and Development Activity and Innovative Advancement of European Enterprises

This article is a try of identifying the positive relation between research and development (R&D) and the innovativeness level of enterprises from European countries. Under the article Author examines the role of research and development activity of enterprises in reinforcing innovativeness position in the ranking of innovativeness of European countries. European enterprises are under competitor’s pressure what forced them to become more innovative. As the research showed enterprises in European countries are very different in the innovativeness level. It can be observed that companies from new member states (after the year 2004) of European Union significantly diverge from the average for old European countries.

The objective of this article is the identification how the research and development activity influences the innovativeness of enterprises among European countries as well as showing the role of R&D as a determinant of innovativeness of enterprises and economies of European member states.

The analysis takes into consideration industrial and manufacturing enterprises from Europe. Sources of data used in the article were statistic data of European Commission, internal and foreign reports.