Sunčica Oberman Peterka

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.

Gender Patterns of Businesses with Growth Potential in Croatia

The literature review presented in the chapter confirms that researchers’ interest is more focused on why and how businesses are created, and much less why and how they grow. There is a shortage of empirical evidence of growth influencers, as well as evidence about the intensity and patterns of the interaction between internal factors and entrepreneurship ecosystem in the process of growing a venture. The authors identify this gap and combine different angles (theory of firm growth, entrepreneurship, inclusion, macroeconomic aspects of using resources) with a gender aspect (inclusion), in exploring why and how businesses grow. Using this angle and aggregated Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) data from the 2003–2013 period, the chapter presents several gender patterns of businesses with growth potential (innovative products, innovative technology, and competitiveness) in Croatia.