DETERMINANTS OF INNOVATION INTENSITY IN DEVELOPED AND IN DEVELOPING ECONOMIES: THE CASE OF FRANCE AND CROATIA.

Motivated by differences in the intensity of innovation across national economies, this paper presents an empirical examination of the determinants of a firm's likelihood to invest in different innovation intensity levels in both France and Croatia which represent developed and developing countries, respectively. We used a theoretical framework, which considers the firm's characteristics, internal strategic behaviours and external strategic features, to guide an empirical exploration into the determinants of innovation performance across two countries. The comparison between results from France and Croatia indicates that the incentives of the innovation activities differ between two countries mainly due to a firm's characteristics (size) and external strategic features (export and firm performance). On the other hand, firm's internal strategic behaviours (quality strategy, environmental strategy, R&D and training) have the same role in innovation performance improvement in both developed and developing countries. Consequently, we conclude that managers of firms should customise strategies which aim to improve innovation performance according to the specificities of national economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]