Innovation, the New Challenge of Today's Entrepreneurship

Abstract

The aim of this article is to evaluate the importance of innovation for entrepreneurship environment in the context of current economic conditions. Throughout the last century, industry leaders learnt to master the production process to such an extent that now it no longer functions as a significant competitive advantage. Every entrepreneur is now facing a harsh and highly competitive business context in a globalized economy, and in order to resist and to be successful the new challenge is to master the innovation process, harnessing change, creating new competitive advantages by offering better products, using better processes, delivering better services or even offering entirely new solutions. Although the process of innovation is one of the most important drivers of growth and prosperity in today's global economy, it is also one of the least understood. This paper wants to bring a contribution to a better understanding of the innovation process and to identify some characteristics of the future entrepreneur. At the end of the paper are presented some recommendations that a company should be aware of in order to be more innovative and also we have identified some characteristics that an entrepreneur must have in order to be successful. This article can be also used as a base for future studies regarding the process of innovation, the management of the innovation process, the establishing of a management system of innovation and its implementation into existing management systems.