Innovation and Innovative Performance in the European Union

Innovation is the application of new and improved ideas, procedures, goods, services and processes that bring new utility or quality used in the application. Particularly, it is important the role of innovation in business and entrepreneurship, which is defined as a continuous effort to search for innovation and commercialization of their profit. Thus, innovation in a broader sense includes organizational, commercial, administrative and other types of innovations, useful ideas from small to large project of reorganization or change in business policy. In developed economies, the special attention is paid to innovation and innovators, and inventiveness has high position on the scale of the system of values. The most valuable resources of the company are not considered in tangible property such as buildings, facilities or capital (this can always be found on the market), but the key parts are knowledge, experience and inventiveness contained in the industrial tradition of the nation and quality personnel. This paper consists of two related parts. The first part refers to exploring the concepts of innovation. The second part deals with the innovations of the European Union, where performance is more closely meet with management of innovation in knowledge-based economy, investment in R&D programs and activities of the EU in the field of innovation and the innovational performance of the EU.