The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the business operations of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Serbia as well as to identify the best ways to overcome the crisis effects and stimulate further SME growth. On a sample of 689 SMEs in Serbia, in the present paper we study the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on both the overall business of firms and certain aspects of their business (demand, logistics, organization of business activities, collection of trade receivables, and access to financing). The results of our research suggest that the crisis effects vary across the SME sector depending on the business activity, size, region an SME operates in, and the extent of achieved business digitalization and networking during the pandemic. Lastly, based on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on the business operations of SMEs in Serbia and taking into account the experiences of other economies with the COVID-19 crisis as well as the lessons learned from previous crises, in this paper we highlight the significance of innovation and possible innovation responses of SMEs to the crisis effects as the ways to overcome it.

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Research Question: This paper explores factors that drive innovativeness of social enterprises in Serbia. Motivation: Social enterprises are gaining importance on global scale, being recognized for their potential to respond to both economic and social challenges, attract capital and generate income in non-traditional ways. Innovativeness comes at the hart of their abilities to achieve their goals. This research is motivated by the idea to understand which factors influence innovativeness in Serbian social enterprises, and to compare these results with the pool of 11 European countries. Identification of the factors that make the difference between social enterprises which are innovative and the ones which are not, provides a chance for business owners/managers, as well as social policies creators, to affect these factors and thus influence the boost of innovativeness and, consequentially, success of socially oriented enterprises in Serbia. Additionally, building on results of a research conducted in 11 European countries, author’s idea is to perform cross analysis of identified innovation factors in social enterprises in Serbia with previously obtained aggregated results. Idea: This paper was driven by the idea to uncover the factors that make a difference in innovative behaviour of social enterprises. Data: Analysis was conducted using responses from on-line survey of 69 Serbian enterprises. We compared these answers to those of 837 social enterprises obtained via the same online surveys from 11 European countries, including Serbia.Tools: Statistical analysis was performed (using t-test for testing equality of means, z-test for testing equality of proportion, hi-square test, Fisher's exact test and some nonparametric tests to confirm the results obtained using parametric tests). The same tests were carried out on the data obtained from social enterprises in Serbia and on the data obtained from all 11 countries examined in order to draw conclusions about the same or different influence of certain factors on the innovativeness of social enterprises. Findings: We found that consciousness about their social mission, perception of innovation as important, financing obtained via grant schemes and involvement of owners, board, customers and NGOs are the most important drivers of innovativeness in Serbian social enterprises. European pool of explored SEs report additional factors influencing innovativeness, which did not appear important in Serbian sample. Contribution: This paper contributes to the research of determinants of the innovativeness of social enterprises by bringing original field data from Serbia, and by providing comparison with the same pool factors examined in the sample of European countries.

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PurposeThe prevailing view in the existing literature is that open innovations (OI) increase the innovative performance of enterprises. The author examines whether the same OI practices are equally important for sole entrepreneurs, micro firms, small firms, medium-sized and large enterprises in introducing radical innovations and which set of OI practices is best for a firm, given the firm's size.Design/methodology/approachIn this study probit models were used on a sample of 915 innovative Serbian enterprises.FindingsOI is important for all enterprises introducing radical innovations. However, not all OI practices are equally effective in each enterprise size group. The set of OI practices leading to radical innovations depends on the firm size. Cooperation with others is not important for sole entrepreneurs and micro and large companies in introducing radical innovations. Still, cooperation's role is predominant in small and medium-sized enterprises. Also, certain OI practices are important for all enterprises, whilst others do not contribute to radical innovations, regardless of the firm size.Practical implicationsOwners/managers can save considerably by avoiding the allocation of resources to OI practices that result in little to no contribution to radical product commercialisation. At the macroeconomic level, these findings can help policymakers create adequate (tailor-made) public policies to achieve innovation in each specific group of firms.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates that not all OI practices are equally important for achieving radical production solutions in each group of enterprises.