Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

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The onset of the pandemic and the subsequent introduction of restrictive measures created many risks for the functioning of SMEs. But at the same time, it also brought a lot of opportunities. Although many economists long expected the arrival of the crisis and in 2019 the first signs of recession appeared in advanced economies, no one expected that it would be accelerated and deepened by the global pandemic. SMEs had to adapt to the new situation as quickly as possible to survive. Moving those activities, the nature of which allowed them, to the online environment became key. The aim of the article is to theoretically define what changes SMEs had to deal with after the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. As part of the fulfilment of this goal, on the one hand, we decided to monitor several indicators capturing the economic situation in SMEs and, on the other hand, their approach to the modernization of the process. Within this research, we identified how the share of employees working via home office changed during the pandemic period, how SMEs prepared for the possibility of introducing a home office, how added value and employment in SMEs developed during this period, as well as whether the share of innovative SMEs in the Slovak economy changed.

This paper examines the relationship between innovation performance and international export competitiveness in four EU countries—Germany, Italy, Czechia, and Slovakia—during the period 2015–2024. The primary objective is to identify the relationship between the number of patent applications to the European Patent Office (EPO) and two key R&D input indicators: R&D expenditure per capita and the number of researchers and engineers per million inhabitants. Simultaneously, the study utilizes the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index to evaluate export specialization in medium-to-high innovation-intensive commodity groups. Although there are numerous studies on innovation, patents, or the significance of research and development, only rarely are these indicators linked to the competitiveness of countries according to comparative advantages in individual sectors. The results of the correlation analysis reveal significant national disparities: while a strong dependency was confirmed in Italy and Slovakia, the findings for Germany show a negative correlation, suggesting that German patenting activity is driven by factors beyond the examined R&D inputs. Panel regression also points out that simple correlation may not be able to clearly capture this relationship, as it may manifest itself with a time lag. From an absolute perspective, Germany maintains a leading position in all indicators, yet Italy demonstrates higher patent efficiency compared to Czechia despite having fewer researchers. The RCA analysis further highlights that while Germany and Italy maintain comparative advantages in high-innovation sectors, Czechia and Slovakia predominantly specialize in medium-innovation-intensive industries.

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is a peer-reviewed journal which publishes original research papers and case studies