Paper Title
INOVATION PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT OF COVID-19: CASE STUDY OF EMERGING ECONOMIES

Abstract
Abstract - By comparing the innovative performance in 2020 with those before the Covid-19 epidemic, this paper finds that European emerging economies increased their efforts and levels of innovation investment in the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, R&D spending, patent filings, and scientific output all remained buoyant in 2020, continuing to build on strong innovative performance before the crisis. By using data from the Global Innovation Index, we further show that substantial differences have emerged between emerging countries in Europe. Although some economies managed to improve in most areas of innovation performance (for example, Estonia), others fell well short of previous results (Romania and Latvia). Others were only able to improve in some areas, such as knowledge and creative output (Czech Republic), and human capital and research and market sophistication (Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, and Bulgaria). We further compared the results with those obtained for South East Asia, confirming a dynamic improvement in the innovation performance of emerging economies in that region, also leading to a significant reduction of the gap during the Covid-19 period. Keywords - Covid-19, Emerging Economy, Innovation, Performance, Policy Response.