Does Croatian national innovation system (NIS) follow the path towards knowledge economy?

摘要

Croatia invested in the last ten years significant efforts to establish the Croatian national innovation system (CNIS) which nowadays presents a complex system of various institutions and supporting programmes for science-industry cooperation. Despite significant progress, the main thesis of the paper is that the concept of NIS in Croatia is, by words of Lundvall (2005) more 'abused' than 'used' as a model for accelerating innovation, economic growth and transition to knowledge economy. The reasons behind are identified in the complex set of mutual interconnected factors that cause substitution of the systemic model of NIS with its fractionalised and narrow-scope version. The factors are classified in the four main groups, as follows: transitional economic deficiency, cognitive maps and mindset, public administration deficit and socio-cultural factors. The paper outlined the present institutional set up of CNIS, provides an overview of its main characteristics and discusses the identified obstructive factors.