Mirela Alpeza

Entrepreneurship in Croatia

The Republic of Croatia is situated in the southern part of Central Europe and the northern part of the Mediterranean. A good strategic position positioned Croatia throughout history as the backbone of international routes, which contributed to its economic development. Small and medium enterprises are an important segment of the Croatian economy, because of its share in the total number of enterprises (99.7% in 2015), share in total revenues (54%), employment (69.2%) and total exports (50.3%). The results of international research in which Croatia has been involved for many years (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, Doing Business, Global Competitiveness Report, Corruption Perceptions Index) are pointing out the key challenges for further development of the small and medium enterprise sector in Croatia: insufficient level of activity in new business venture start-up, small share of growing enterprises, administrative obstacles to the implementation of entrepreneurial activity, insufficient development of the financial market and lack of education focused on the development of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills. From the perspective of achieving the targets of Europe 2020 and the perspective of the European Semester, the development of the Croatian economy, and thus the small and medium enterprise sector in the future period, will depend on the responses to the identified challenges.

San Francisco Coffee House Opens in Croatia

Denis Tensek (MBA) and his wife Jasmina Pacek (MFA) spent a considerable amount of time in the U.S.; both went to graduate schools in California and have worked for well known American companies. Armed with the know-how they obtained from their experiences in the U.S. they left their management positions and returned to their homeland of Croatia in order to spend time with their family and to help their country develop.

Franchising in Croatia

Scientific research in the field of franchising as a business model has been conducted for more than 20 years, but it was only during the 1990s that research interest in this area became more intense, particularly research that focused on the global context. During this period franchising became an increasingly interesting business concept to scientists and researchers from different areas, because the variables involved in franchising merit specific study (Combs and Ketchen, 2003) to entrepreneurship experts, because franchising represents a driving force for starting a business venture; to marketing experts, because it represents one of the main distribution channels in new economies; to strategic management experts, because it represents and important organizational form; and to financial experts, because they are interested in capital investment structures in franchise businesses.