* Selma Smajlović, PhD., Senior Teaching Assisent, (corresponding author), University of Tuzla, Faculty of Economics, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Univerzitetska 8, BiH 75000 Tuzla, Phone: +387 35 320 820, E-mail: selma.smajlovic@untz.ba ** Bahrija Umihanić, Ph.D., Full Professor, University of Tuzla, Faculty of Economics, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Univerzitetska 8, BiH 75000 Tuzla, Phone: +387 35 320 820, E-mail: bahrija.umihanic@untz.ba *** ̋Lejla Turulja, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, School of Economics and Business Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Trg oslobodjenja – Alija Izetbegovic 1, Phone: +387 33 275 970; E-mail: lejla.turulja@efsa.unsa.ba Abstract. This study aims to clarify the relation between technological innovation and business model innovation and their shared impact on the business success of medium and large enterprises. Drawing on the ResourceBased View, this paper offers a comprehensive research model that analyses the relationships between technological innovation and business model innovations and their impact on business success. Structural Equation Modelling is utilized for the analysis of a dataset collected in a Southeast European developing country among medium and large enterprises. The results show that technological innovation has a positive influence on business model innovation and that business model innovation positively impacts the success of a business. Finally, the results confirm the mediating role of business model innovation between technological innovation and company business success. This research adds to the existing literature by empirically investigating the relationship between technological innovation, business model innovation, and company success identifying an antecedent role in the relationship between technological innovation and business model innovation.

1.INTRODUCTIONEntrepreneurial process begins with someone's decision to become entrepreneur (Barringer and Ireland, 2009), followed by entrepreneurial opportunity recognition (Hatten, 2006; Kaplan, 2003; Timmons and Spinelli, 2007), which leads to starting a business (Bygrave, 1989). Timmons and Spinelli (2007) observe entrepreneurial process through three driving forces of successful launching entrepreneurial venture, whereby opportunity takes the first place, followed by entrepreneurial team and resources.Researchers and theoreticians, authors of many papers, who address the issue of entrepreneurial opportunity, have different definitions of this term. Opportunity is seen as an idea (Davidsson et al., 2004), business form or potential company (DeTienne and Chandler, 2007; Singh 1998), objective phenomenon separable from entrepreneur (Shane 2000) or subjective phenomenon resulting from entrepreneur's cognitive capacities (Sarason et al., 2006). Barringer and Ireland (2009, p. 220) define opportunity as "a favorable set of circumstances that creates a need for a new product, service or business." A very similar interpretation is the one offered by Casson (1982, in Shane and Venkataraman, 2000, p. 220), who defines entrepreneurial opportunities as "those situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, and organizing methods can be introduced and sold at greater than their cost of production. " Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition can be seen as "either perceiving a possibility to create new businesses, or significantly improving the position of an existing business, in both cases resulting in new profit potential" (Christensen et al., 1989, p. 3).Therefore, an entrepreneur primarily creates an idea of a new product, process or service, but not all ideas are opportunities as well (Dobre, 2006; Hatten, 2006; Timmons and Spinelli, 2007), and thus will not develop into businesses. Entrepreneur's role is to recognize the idea as a potential opportunity for starting a business (Ardichvili et al., 2003), but also to be actively involved in shaping the idea so that it may become an opportunity, by overcoming the environment uncertainty (Dimov, 2007). For an idea to be an opportunity, it needs to satisfy criteria of attractiveness, sustainability, timeliness and to be anchored in a product or service which adds value for its buyer or end-user (Barringer and Ireland, 2009; Hatten, 2006; Timmons and Spinelli, 2007).One of the central issues for entrepreneurship researchers is how and why some people are able to identify and use entrepreneurial opportunity and start a business, while others are not. What are the factors conditioning entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and exploitation in order to start an entrepreneurial venture? Research has shown that among other, these factors may include: creativity (Hills et al., 1997), work experience (Timmons and Spinelli, 2007), social networking of entrepreneurs (Ozgen and Baron, 2007; Singh et al., 1999), prior knowledge on the market, customers' needs and the ways to satisfy them (Shane 2000), intuition and ability to foresee (Zahra, 2002) or cognitive factors (Krueger, 2003). As key factors influencing the processes of recognizing and developing the opportunity, which lead to starting a business, Ardichivili et al. (2003) mention information asymmetry and prior knowledge, social networking and personality traits that include creativity, optimism and efficiency. These factors lead to entrepreneurial alertness, which further leads to entrepreneurial opportunity recognition.Literature review has identified almost a complete lack of theoretical discussion and research into the relation between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. More commonly, the attention is directed to the relationship between entrepreneurship education and the decision to become entrepreneur, successful launching a business, which is a wider term than entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, or successful running of the founded company. …

1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND OF THE RESEARCHThe problem of financing entrepreneurial activity is probably as old as this activity itself. Many businesses fail due to problems in financing. Mostly, early stage businesses are in need of start-up capital.Literature on financing entrepreneurial activity recognises two main sources of financing entrepreneurial activity: personal resources and financing from external resources. There are numerous factors which influence the use of these sources of financing (e.g. stage of development, age, entrepreneur's gender, development of financial markets etc). Sherman (2005) found that in the initial phase of business development entrepreneurs mostly use personal funds, or rely on government funds.Early stage funding of entrepreneurial activity in the Western Balkan countries is influenced by a number of market failures which are considered to be major obstacles for further entrepreneurship development in this region. Even though the Balkan region has an emerging start-up scene the governments are not sufficiently supporting their development. Government support for entrepreneurs in early stages of entrepreneurial activity is of great importance because most of these businesses are not eligible to apply for commercial bank loans due to formal, and strict procedures, as well as a high risk which is related to the early stages of business operations. In most cases banks are unwilling to consider giving loans to start-ups, which are mostly in need of new capital in order to finance their further growth or even in need of initial capital in order to start a business. According to Aktekin & Sohl (2011), searching for capital for entrepreneurs is a time consuming process that can have serious effects on survival of the business and its growth. Cassar (2004) claims that early stage external funding is important and critical in the early stage of the venture's existence.Lerner (2009) stated that governments have a positive role in "kick-starting entrepreneurship" and their funding is important, especially in times of crisis, because entrepreneurship is a business with increased returns. Even though the general entrepreneurial climate is important, it is equally important that governments "intervene directly in the entrepreneurial process" through fund allocation. Vanacker and Deloof (2013) believe it was the financial crisis which began around 2008 that turned the focus of researchers towards financing and success of business start-ups. Availability of financing for SMEs has also been determined as important for their growth and development (Ou, Haynes, 2006; Cook, 2001). Specific financing strategies are required especially during the start-up phase due to the lack of trading history or higher risks (Berger & Udell, 1998; Cessar, 2004; Huyghebert & Van de Gucht, 2007). However, some authors agree that financing of start-ups cannot be standardized and that the lifecycle/financing approach is not applicable to all SMEs in all industries and of all sizes (Abdulsaleh & Worthington, 2013; Gregory et al., 2005; Berger & Udell, 1998). These findings, however, are opposite to the presumptions of Myer's (1984) pecking-order theory suggesting that internal sources of financing are prioritised during early stages of firm's existence wherein external sources are being considered afterwards. On the other hand, other empirical studies like Abdulsaleh & Worthington (2013), Gregory et al. (2005) led to conclusions that older businesses rely more on internal financing due to the fact that they can accumulate earnings and that internal funds are mostly available for their business operations. A recent OECD study (2015) claims that broadening financing options which are available and accessible to SMEs is a key challenge for policy makers in the quest for fostering their development.Different and often contradictory results of various empirical studies indicate that more scientific attention should be directed towards researching this area. …

Growth and development are among the main goals of every company. A dedication to the activities which create conditions for growth and development is an important management operation. Entrepreneurial activity provides prerequisites so that growth and development can be achieved. In large and existing companies, entrepreneurial activity presents intrapreneurship. The subject of this paper is to what extent are intrapreneurial activities present in production companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, we explored organizational prerequisites for intensifying the impact of intrapreneurship, and the impact of intrapreneurial activities on company growth. Primary research was conducted in the field using the survey as a tool for data collection. By interviewing people we obtained the answer to the question, to what extent is intrapreneurship developed in the production companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina in terms of two key dimensions of intrapreneurship: innovation and autonomy of action, and their impact on the growth of production companies. Additionally, we reached an answer as to what is necessary to do in the field of management of the companies in order to create assumptions for intensifying the intrapreneurial activities of those companies. The sample represented 50 major production companies in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  We used statistical methods of data processing: descriptive analysis, factor analysis, regression, and correlation. By analyzing the results of the research, we confirmed the hypothesis that the implementation of intrapreneurial activities has a positive effect on the development of production companies. Recommendations were given in order to improve organizational presumptions for intensive intrapreneurial activities. Keywords : Entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, innovation, autonomy of action, growth of companies

The dynamics of the contemporary environment with all its characteristics has greatly encouraged further research of the impact of innovation on the company's performance due to the paradigm that defines an innovation as means to enhance the competitiveness of enterprise. Thanks to the efforts of scientists, corporate managers and owners of capital can now choose from a variety of management tools to measure the innovation and success of the enterprise. In this paper, the methodology of Croatian Innovation Score (in Croatian: Hvatski Kvocijent Inovativnosti - HKI) is applied to assess the condition and the activities undertaken in order to build innovation capacity, and an assessment of the perception of innovation at the enterprise level, whereas the methodology of BEX index (Business Excellence Index) was used to measure business excellence of an enterprise. Applying the methodology on a sample of large manufacturing companies from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the composite innovation indices and business excellence indices were first calculated. The standard multiple regression has been applied to explain the relationship between innovation and business excellence of an enterprise. The results obtained in this research are encouraging and stimulating for the managers of the studied companies to strengthen the innovation capacity in order to advance on the business excellence ranking scale.(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)1. INTRODUCTIONThis paper is based on the presumption that the implementation of innovation positively affects the financial performance of companies that are being assessed for their business excellence. In their research, Tidd, Bessant & Pavitt (2005) point out that companies which implement innovations in order to improve their processes and differentiate their products / services are significantly ahead of their competition in terms of market share, profitability, companies' growth, and net income. Urban and Hauser (1993) highlight innovation as being essential for creating a competitive advantage and company's subsistence, although innovation is at the same time extremely risky activity that constantly requires enormous financial and human resources. Bearing all the above in mind, the managers' task is to ensure the continuity of innovation. However, in order to reduce the business risks of investing in innovation they also need information about the efficiency and effectiveness of resources that the company has invested in the innovation process. Synchronization of innovation capacity development, strategy options, processes and innovation models not only considerably contribute to the risk reduction of investing in innovation, but it also leads to achieving company's business excellence.In this study, authors analyze the relationship between innovation and business excellence of large manufacturing companies from Bosnia and Herzegovina using the methodologies established by Croatian scholars that have been tested on Croatian companies (Antoljak, Mitrovic et al., 2011; Belak & Aljinovic, 2008). The study comprises 36 large manufacturing companies for which their composite index of innovation will be calculated so as to pre-calculate summary data for innovation capacity categories, innovation processes and strategies and for innovation results. Composite index of business excellence (BEX) is to be calculated for the sample companies. Business Excellence Model (BEX) evaluates the existing and expected business excellence. Hereafter, the paper explores the correlation between innovation and company's business excellence by using the HKI and BEX indices.The main objective of this paper is, using standard multiple regression, to determine the correlation between innovation and business excellence of large manufacturing enterprises in B&H based on composite innovation and business excellence indices, operationalized according to HKI (innovation) and BEX (business excellence) methodology. …

Intrapreneurship holders are entrepreneurial employ ees who develop entrepreneurial activities within the existing enterprises, which i n turn produces improved business performances. However, in order for entrepreneuria l employees to act and release their creative energy, it is necessary to provide the spe cific organizational requirements. Specifically, the rigid traditional o rganizational structures and bureaucratic approach to job design, which is often inherent in large enterprises, are not suitable infrastructures for developing entrepreneu rial climate in the organization. Consequently, the identification and analysis of the dominant type of organizational structure as well as the degree of c entralization and formalization and the degree of specialization and application of teamwor k in Bosnian companies, in light of ensuring organizational assumptions for the develop ment of intrapreneurship in these companies, are only some of the goals of this paper . This analysis will be based on the results of the empirical research conducted back in 2011, which covered a hundred of Bosnian companies, and also on the results of the G EM research back in 2011. This paper will include both the presentation and debate on the basic obstacles to the development of stronger Bosnian intrapreneurship in companies, but also recommendations regarding the content of the organi zational changes that should be undertaken for this purpose.