Exploring the COVID-19 pandemic impact on innovation and entrepreneurship – Review and evidence from Global Innovation Index

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unparalleled crisis that has affected businesses, individuals, institutions, and governments in multiple ways. This paper comes to critically analyze the impact of the pandemic on entrepreneurship and innovation. Studies show that crises can also be perceived as opportunities for continuing creating new solutions and adopting innovative ways of doing business. In this sense, the present paper analyzes the current state of the art in terms of the pandemic impact on small and medium enterprises and the innovation status and proposes a systematic literature review and comparative analysis to depict the situation in Romania. For the purposes of this research, the data from the Global Innovation Index Reports is being used. The results show significant positive and negative changes in three main categories, namely business sophistication, infrastructure, knowledge & technology output. The paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by summarizing the main findings from multiple publications and proposes recommendations for policymakers and institutions to provide the corresponding framework so that entrepreneurs could benefit from innovation.