The importance of business support institutions for implementing innovations in SMEs

The authors demonstrate a problem of innovation support by business support institutions (BSIs) operating in the market. The conducted research and secondary data analyses indicate that despite the availability of broad range of dedicated products, entrepreneurs prefer traditional forms of cooperation with external institutions focusing on the access to external sources of financing. The situation requires further research on the causes of such a low utilisation of BSIs’ innovation support offers and low level of engagement in generating innovations in the econ-omy by business support institutions, which were established for this purpose.