Abstract
Small competitive businesses with growth potential are crucial for the Croatian economy, which made a slow recovery after the 2008 crisis. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor confirms on a yearly basis that the country has a low share of businesses with growth potential, mainly because of a lack of competitiveness measured in terms of product novelty. The technological readiness of Croatian businesses is close to the EU’s average, but product innovativeness is falling behind (Singer et al. 2018, p. 34–35). This brings up the question of the entrepreneurial ecosystem which should provide better support to businesses with growth intentions and potential through education, R&D transfer supported by government programs, availability of equity capital, or business angels support. Examples of hidden champions confirm the existence of businesses strongly committed to growth, and their lessons learned are that their success is exclusively based on the strong leadership of their owners, capability to develop teams with strong commitment to innovativeness and global markets.
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Notes
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“All enterprises with average annualized growth greater than 20 percent per annum, over a three-year period, and with 10 or more employees at the beginning of the observation period. Growth is thus measured by the number of employees and by turnover.” (OECD 2007). The analysis showed that high-growth businessess have more employees with highly specialized knowledge than non-growing businesses (based on 2012–2015 data, as part of the research project Development and Application of Growth Potential Prediction Models for Small and Medium Enterprises in Croatia financed by the Croatian Science Foundation, Singer et al. 2018, p. 93).
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Although Croatia is struggling to identify its strategic priorities in terms of industries, there are several industries which show increasing capacity for innovation and competitiveness, and they are likely to be a source for future hidden champions: IT (software), food industry, tourism, wood industry, and the production of specialized boats.
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Singer, S., Oberman Peterka, S. (2021). Hidden Champions of Croatia. In: Braček Lalić, A., Purg, D. (eds) Hidden Champions in Dynamically Changing Societies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65451-1_12
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