The Innovativeness and Competitiveness of the Visegrad Group Countries in the years 2011-2016-Selected Indicators

Visegrad Group is a group of four countries in the Central Europe, namely of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary. These countries share not only similar history, but also similar economic development and geopolitical ideas. Nowadays, the economic development of every country and its competitiveness on the world market is supported by the creation of innovation (knowledge-based economy). The aim of this article is to present the results of a comparative analysis of changes in innovativeness and competitiveness of V4 economies over a period of 5 years. The Summary Innovation Index (Sit) was used in the European Innovation Scoreboard, as well as the Global Competitiveness Report and Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). The analysis shows that all members of V4 are so called moderate innovators; however, there are some differences among analyzed countries. The Czech Republic begins to diverge from other member states of V4 in terms of SII, and it has been increasing its GCI as well. Poland occupies one of the last positions in the V4 innovation ranking, where Hungary was the weakest in terms of competitiveness in 2016. Detail analysis of results is in this article.