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business, in comparison to the number of those that manage a mature,
established business. This result places us among the less developed countries,
although in the 2012 World Economic Forum classification we were included
among the most advanced countries.
x
The analysis of the rate of business interruption in Slovakia showed that year-
on-year, Slovakia experienced a decline in the number of entrepreneurs who
have discontinued their business (in 2012 it was 4.7% while in 2011 it was
7.0%). Even though the rate was still the highest among V5 countries and
Austria, in the European context we have improved our position from the first
to the third place. Interesting, however, is that the order of importance of the
reasons why entrepreneurs interrupt their business remained the same in 2012
as in 2011. Reasons for discontinuation according to their importance are the
following: the business was not profitable (43%), personal reasons (10.5%),
different work or business opportunity (7.6%), problems with financing (7.2%),
retirement and pre-planned abolition of business (3.1%) and the opportunity to
sell the business (2.0%).
x
The entrepreneurs who have taken steps to re-engage in entrepreneurial
process after an earlier business discontinuation are labeled restarted
entrepreneurs. The proportion of restarted entrepreneurs declined in Slovakia
in the year-on-year comparison. While in 2011, among the early-stage
entrepreneurs, one in every seven was a restarted entrepreneur; in 2012 it was
only one in every ten. From this we can conclude that restart activities in
Slovakia have declined. This is a phenomenon that cannot be considered
positive, and this group of entrepreneurs also needs attention. Slovakia lags in
this area of business in the European context, a fact also confirmed by a 2012
evaluation by the European Commission that reported comparatively
unfavorable conditions for honest entrepreneurs who have failed and want to
start again. That evaluation also noted that there were no changes within the
entrepreneurial policies that would lead to an improvement of this situation.
x
Employee entrepreneurial activity (EEA or Intrapreneurship) increased in all
surveyed indicators in the year-on-year comparison, both in Slovakia as well as
in the countries whose development is innovation-driven. Despite these
positive developments, Slovak values across all indicators in this group remain
below the European average, as well as below the average of innovation driven
countries. One possible explanation for this situation is that large Slovak
companies are owned by foreign shareholders who prefer to locate innovative
and creative activities in the heaquarters of their holdings, while the level of
intrapreneurial activity in Slovak SMEs is not high enough to compensate this
deficiency.
x
Research on the use of networking in the business activities indicates that the
countries of the former Eastern Bloc achieve the best results. Slovakia achieves