The literature on R&D cooperation and innovations has risen in few past years. R&D cooperation and innovation contribute to growth of companies and even countries. Yet nothing is investigated in this field for Croatia. Only one research was found (Aralica et. al. (2007)) based on CIS data and the paper investigates R&D cooperation of foreign SMSs in Croatia. Therefore we contribute by presenting results for whole Croatian manufacturing sector on grounds of EMIS (European manufacturing Innovation Survey) data run in 2006. We measure success of R&D cooperation if it contributes to new product launches, which in turn gives higher returns than from regular activity. This approach is different than usually met in research on R&D cooperation. We address several questions about cooperation in Croatian manufacturing firms like: is new product launch positively correlated with cooperation and what type of cooperation is specific to those that launched new products. In answering these questions we aim to establish current state of cooperation of Croatian manufacturing companies. The results show that cooperation is common for manufacturing companies in Croatia ; cooperation differs across industries and size of the companies and cooperation differs if it contributes to radical innovations as opposed to only modifications of existing products.

Economics