84 PERSPECTIVES ON BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS | VOL 44 | 2026 tions, given the quality and output of its education system, the vitality of its STEM sector, and its recent EU accession. The Estonian education system is less restrictive than Croatia’s. In Croatia, vocational students do not have unrestricted access to all types of tertiary education, unlike their Estonian counterparts. Estonian STEM students engage with a wider variety of fields, while Croatian students are concentrated in ICT (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025a). The Estonian system trains its students well, as Estonians have higher mathematics and language competencies than Croatians (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025a; OECD, 2025). As shown in Figure 2, Estonians have a higher employment rate after graduation than Croatians, overall and in STEM fields. Estonian students evidently have better intellectual and didactic preparation than Croatian students, allowing them to meaningfully engage with STEM careers in which they have genuine interest. Estonia is one of the most innovative CEE nations, the only one to receive the “strong innovator” designation, performing at 104.8% of the EU average (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025c). Croatia holds a “moderate innovator” designation at 71.6% (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025b). Estonia performs well above the EU average in intellectual property applications, R&D output, and collaborations between public and private institutions (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025c), trends indicative of an environment invested in innovation from all angles. On the other hand, Croatia lags significantly behind the EU average in intellectual property applications and R&D output (European Commission: Directorate-General for Research…, 2025b), harking back to the need for experiential learning in Croatian classrooms (Palijaš, 2024). Innovation cannot occur unless students gain practical experience that can be applied to create products and materialize ventures. Estonia makes international trade and cooperative investments a national priority. Estonia’s focus on and support of STEM are attractive to foreign investment. After financial services and real estate, the science and technology sector receives the third-highest share of foreign investment at 13% (U.S. Department of State, 2025b). The U.S. Department of State (2025a) defines many Croatian STEM industries as “promising” areas for future investments. Estonia surpasses all other European nations in startups, unicorns, and investments per capita; Croatian investments pale in comparison, at less than $250 per capita versus $1056 (Estonia Leads…, 2022). It can take as little as a few minutes to register a business in Estonia, with a maximum of three days (U.S. Department of State, 2025b). Entrepreneurship is widespread and encouraged. For instance, Startup Estonia is a government-led initiative to provide Estonian entrepreneurs with tools, programming, and networking resources (Our Story, 2026). By contrast, Croatia’s regulatory framework for foreign investment and business development is far less streamlined, deterring entrepreneurial activity (European Commission, n.d.). Additionally, the integration of entrepreneurship into curricula is less prevalent in Croatia than in Estonia, despite ongoing reforms (Hornstein Tomic & Taylor, 2018; World Bank 2024). In supporting entrepreneurship, Estonia provides jobs for current STEM trainees and job prospects for future professionals, preventing the establishment of a negative feedback loop like Croatia’s. Croatia’s primary overall advantage over Estonia, and other CEE countries, is its location. Croatia has a well-developed highway network and a long coastline (U.S. Department of State, 2025a), which facilitates connections with neighboring countries and the global community. Croatia’s citizens can pursue international collaborations beyond EU borders. Also, Croatia’s infrastructure supports growing STEM economic activity (U.S. Department of State, 2025a). The recent development of regional centers of competence has introduced high-quality vocational education facilities in engineering, health care, and agriculture (Cedefop & Agency for…, 2023). Expanding this model to universities, providing tertiary students with tangible resources for focused exploration, and promoting investigation in basic science and technology creates opportunities for innovation (OECD, 2025). Despite solid resources that could be leveraged for STEM advancement, Croatia faces several major disadvantages: its inability to retain a well-educated workforce; its lack of STEM jobs; its difficulty supporting new business development, whether by foreign companies or internal startups; and its apparent unwillingness to allocate resources strategically (Palijaš, 2024). The Croatian government must recognize these setbacks and capitalize on these advantages to establish itself as a STEM leader in the CEE region. Croatia has the assets to move closer to what Estonia has achieved and reverse the negative education-to-career spiral if it makes a sustained commitment to prioritizing STEM and reducing its overreliance on tourism (Hornstein Tomic & Taylor, 2018).
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