THE ROLE OF OPEN INNOVATION AMONG SMES IN THE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Open innovation begins to play an increasingly important role in the innovative development of small and medium-sized enterprises. This is the effect of significant benefits that they achieve as a result of presenting attitudes, which are open to the environment. Increase of the importance in relation to open innovation results directly from the benefits that these enterprises get from the environment's exploration. Furthermore, innovative development - as emphasized in many researches - would be impossible without the use of open innovation models. Hence, it is reasonable to state that open innovation is one of the main determinants of this development. This is particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises due to their limited resources. In the majority of situations, the environment acts as a buffer to fill in existing gaps. Therefore, these enterprises are mainly focused on the exploration of the environment. The aim of this article is to show the relation between open innovation and innovative development, as well as perform its overall characterization. The research took place in 2016 among the selected (at the high level of innovation development) small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the framework of the research project. The study included those entities which over the last three years conducted innovation activities in business areas.