Tiltai

Innovations and innovative activities are becoming themost important feature of a country or region development. For this reason agreat amount of literature highlights this topic. There are a lot of documents,strategies and programs signed which try to enhance business competitivenessand productivity. Formation of regional policy should make that thisdevelopment will ensure a high quality of life throughout the country. Economicgrowth of countries in encouraging to look for more efficienty, which isdirectly related with innovative entities. The significance of innovations isthe focus of EU regional policy. Although the innovation phenomenon is widelyanalyzed, consistent and specified concept is not formulated. Thus, this paperwill primarily discuss the diversity of innovation concept and interface withthe regional concept. Another part of the work aims to reveal the determinantsof the regional development influencing innovation activities by differentauthor’s approaches. The final section of this paper is to present adoptedmethodological matrix for innovativeness evaluation for regions in Lithuania.In Lithuaniainnovativeness is counted just on a country’s level, no territorial importanceis emphasised. Even though innovations are closely related with regionalpolicy. So the main purpose of this paper is to make methodological basis formore detailed (in a territorial contex) analysis of innovativeness in Lithuania’sregions.

We are living in world of dynamic changes, and transformations of global systems and the environment around us leave an impact

Innovation and entrepreneurship in regions is one of essential tools, in added value creation in economics and in development in national level. It is very important to encourage creativity, new ways of thinking and continuous process of learning of individuals. There are some different approaches how to measure competitiveness of state economy and competitiveness in regional level. Global Competitiveness Index shows competitiveness of state among other world economies based on the 12 pillars of competitiveness, which is difficult to apply in regional or entrepreneurial level due to lack of data at regional level. Innovation is a key factor for development and competitiveness in individual (individual, enterprise) and institutional (local governmental institutions, regional, national and global level. Scientific problem of article is that impact of creativity, knowledge creation and dissemination and cooperation could not be measured trough quantitative data. Aim of the article is to define support model for cooperation of individual – institutional level in innovative entrepreneurship and its impact on regional development. Methods ar analysis of scientific literature, and political planning documents for define of support model in dynamic external environment.

The article aims to show that the main and most important prerequisite for successful hotel business growth in current promptly changing business environment becomes development of innovation in the hotel industry. Though the term innovation is already widely defined by many researchers, it is considered in the article as a subject for future discussions leading to proposed scientific classification of innovations based on selected criterions. Evaluation of the process of innovation appearance in the hotel market allowed creation of the model, presenting the main influences and attributes of the whole innovation process in a hotel industry. Afterwards, the article discusses some specific innovation tools that are essential for hotel enterprises and which could be challenging for hoteliers in Ukrainian market nowadays. Based on the empirical research results, the obstacles which hinder up-to-date innovative operations in Ukrainian Radisson chain hospitality market are discussed. As well, concerning prospective innovation trends for Radisson Hotels in Ukraine, advices for future innovation implementation were proposed.

Innovation development process in companies is described by several challenges. One major problem is that there is much confusion about what it takes to develop innovations and what factors affect the innovation development process. The paper focuses on innovation process’ affecting factors in Latvian market. The paper’s goal is to identify main factors that affect the innovation process the Latvian companies. After surveying 128 companies, authors concludes that many factors affects innovation process and none of them should be ignored. Following factors affect innovation process the most and therefore should be analysed more deeply: 1) The company’s own resources; 2) High employees knowledge, competencies, skills and experience; 3) Investors’ attraction opportunities. Research also emphasises importance of company’s human resource, therefore authors suggest companies to look at their employees from different paradigm and approach them as the most valuable company’s asset.