Empirical research of success innovation projects due to the sectoral specifics in Czech companies

Purpose of the article This article represents a study examining the structure and properties of enterprises with respect to the success of innovation projects (IP) in the Czech Republic. It is because through IP is increasing competitiveness of Czech companies. Attention focuses mainly on implementation phase (exploitation/completion of the project) of a new or significantly improved product, process, organizational or marketing method. The reason is that most IP fail, whether it is the firm, project, product or market related factors among others. Methodology/methods The empirical evidence is based on a quantitative data gathered through an email questionnaire which yielded 194 qualified responses. The major analytic procedure applied within this research comprises methods of correspondence analysis and validation technique based on chi-square nonparametric tests for testing dependence of selected variables. The procedure correspondence analysis is used performed by IBM SPSS 22 which includes the calculation of the singular values, inertia and quality display. For transparent representation of the structure of dependence and interpretation is used symmetric correspondence map. Scientific aim The objective of this study is to answer a research questions: How many IP succeed, how many fail due to the sectoral specifics in Czech companies? What are the differences between IP that succeed and those that fail? What are the factors that lead to failure in the projects examined in this empirical research? Findings Empirical evidence suggests that only 17% of the IP (regardless of sector) can be considered completely successful. More than 80 percent of all IP failed, either completely or partly. The research confirmed statistically significant differences in the success of IP due to the sector specifics. Among the most succssefull include growing sector of wine makers, manufacturing sector (mainly engineering) and service sector (trade and scientific-technical activities) have the highest share of successfully realized projects. The factors of failed IP come from technological and economic point of view in particular. Conclusions Definition of successful project is depended on point of view of project management and innovation management literature. Percentage of project success may have informative value, but there is necessary to know other factors, which impact final success. Among the most important factors could be add (1) geographical location (only Czech Republic), (2) focusing on whole industry, (3) complexity of projects, (4) scale of projects.