Visegrad Group countries as a European centre of innovation - an ecosystem and financing

Building a modern economy requires the development of a complete ecosystem of innovation. It provides the ability not only to transfer but primarily to create new technologies, thereby increasing productivity. In the long run, it is the productivity of labour and capital that is the driving force of prosperity and improvement of living standards. Increases in productivity are, in turn, driven by key factors such as advances in technology, changes in work organisation, and an increase in the share of the physical and intellectual capital in the structure of production factors. Meanwhile, both the level of economic productivity resulting from technological advancements and the level of capital are relatively low in the Central European countries. This is the legacy of the intermittent history of their statehood, the times of communism, and still too short a period of the region’s economic transformation.