ROMANIA'S R&D AND INNOVATION POTENTIAL AT EU LEVEL AND THE MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR SMEs

This paper aims to assess Romania's R&D and innovation potential within the European context, and to identify the main managerial implications for SMEs that result from the analysis. In order to do so, we have compared the trends emphasized by the classical assessment of R&D and innovation and those underlined by the changes in the volume of productive knowledge that is implied in the export structure - i. e. the economic complexity index. As a result, we managed to identify a strong positive correlation between the growth rates of the GDP per capita and the economic complexity index during 1995 - 2012, as well as the fact that there are two main groups of states whose economic complexity has grown: the Baltic and the Central European countries. Therefore, it can be argued that there are some forces that make the medium and long term perspective of Romania, in terms of R&D and innovation, look much better than the simple extrapolation of the latest trends regarding the R&D personnel and gross expenditures. Although the amount of the societal know-how is critical for R&D and innovation, making it easier to start entrepreneurial activities with high degree of novelty and innovation, the accumulation and retention of knowledge is a quite costly encounter for SMEs. As a consequence, there are some major managerial implications for SMEs that result from the analysis of the Romania's R&D and innovation potential.