Abstract:
In this paper, we examine the role of financial and non-financial obstacles to innovation activity of Czech manufacturing industries. Specifically, we study whether the obstacles differ depending on the technology level of industry and size of enterprises. We argue that high tech manufacturing enterprises face problems with knowledge obstacles, while low tech industries faced problems with lack of finance and market demand, respectively. We find that the impact of size category is significant for all categories of obstacles. Further, we examine the role of the obstacles in decisions to cooperate on innovations and abandon innovations, respectively. We show that (1) knowledge obstacle was the main reason behind the decision to cooperate and (2) enterprises with financial, knowledge and market problems abandoned innovation activity significantly more frequently.
