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x
The Slovak women are more conservative compared to men in terms of
growth aspirations
related to high rates expected job creation (more than
6 jobs). This pattern is in line with general trends worldwide. In terms of
innovation aspirations
(active innovations), the overall population
showed decrease in 2013, but innovation aspirations of women increased. On
the other hand, Slovak early-stage women entrepreneurs exhibit decrease in
terms of technology usage innovation (passive innovation), while the
established women entrepreneurs reported increasing usage of new
technologies in their businesses. From the perspective of
foreign market
penetration
, Slovak women are more active in the category with more than
25% of customers abroad, but on average their male counterparts exhibit
higher foreign market penetration in their businesses.
Entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia
x
The entrepreneurial environment in Slovakia as a whole can be characterized
by negative state and therefore also an insufficient support for formation and
development of entrepreneurial activity. Most of framework conditions, with
few exceptions, exhibit not only the negative evaluation, but also its
unfavourable development during the last three years. In general, we can
conclude that entrepreneurial activity in Slovakia develops not “thanks to”
but “despite of” the state of different entrepreneurship framework
conditions. These findings are consistent from absolute as well as relative
perspective. Therefore, a considerable qualitative improvement across
almost all entrepreneurial environment attributes would be required in order
to sufficiently support the entrepreneurial activity in Slovakia.
Finance
x
Entrepreneurial financing in Slovakia in general exhibits rather negative
situation with moderate decrease during the years 2011 to 2013. The access
to different sources of financing especially for new and growing firms,
insufficiently supports the entrepreneurial activity in our country.
x
Rather favourable is the access to debt funding (through debt instruments)
as well as to funding from private individuals and venture capitalists (i. e.
modern forms of financing).
x
The worst evaluated funding option is the access to funding through initial
public offerings (IPOs), which reflects practically non-existent stock
exchange in our country. Also unfavourable, mainly from comparative
perspective, is the availability of government subsidies for new and growing
firms.
Government policies (priorities, support)
x
Prioritization of entrepreneurship and its concrete support in government
policies seems to be an insufficient and constantly worsening attribute of the