Reflections on the EU Innovation Experiences: Concepts and Proposals for Belarus as an EU’s Eastern Partnership Country

Abstract

Reflections on EU’s Innovation Experiences: Concepts and Proposals for Belarus as an EU’s Eastern Partnership Country. The purpose of this paper is to present and develop specific principles and to provide appropriate guidelines related to the preparation of the most important potentials in the organizational development of the national innovation system in Belarus. National Innovation System in Belarus has a number of strengths and weaknesses. The prevailing innovation patterns of Belarus enterprises (investment mainly in acquisition of equipment and upgrading of skills) and an insufficient level of production of knowledge (R&D and patenting activity) point to some weaknesses of the innovation system and a number of gaps which need to be addressed in the future. In Belarus there have been falling investments in R&D as compared to appropriate cost of patent actions. Therefore Belarus ranks should improve in the area of streamlining and exercising development of patents. The Belarus economy has concentrations of employment and production in a number of sectors including especially manufacturing industry which accounts for more than 33% of the GDP, agri-business, machinery and component production, chemicals, petroleum, electricity, wood and furniture industry. Nonetheless, it should also be noted that the contributions of overall employment generated by medium and high technology manufacturing enterprises and high-tech services in Belarus are both substantially below the EU-28 levels. In terms of composition, this work is so structured that after the introductory part matter is written to present some relevant experiences of the EU and experiences of Belarus as a cooperating country. Authors proceed from an assumption that the proposed innovation models are certainly feasible and can be adapted especially in dynamic and emerging economies such as the Belarusian. In this way, especially small and medium-sized enterprises that strive to become competitive in the market and financially would then have better infrastructure for development. Detailed reviews of innovation activities were created as well as models for the future innovation of this growing economy. Finally, the paper aims to help creators of innovation policies in practice to more easily access the proposed operational solutions for managing effectiveness of innovation system through linkages and co-ordination between its key components.