Resumen
In this paper a review of significance of country?s innovation potential for its economic growth and development is displayed first. Afterwards, positions and values of the global innovation index for the top 25 most innovative economies, for Serbia and for selected countries from its surroundings, for the period from 2009 to 2012 have been displayed. In order to classify selected countries into two or more groups, based on their similarity according to innovation performances, cluster analysis is conducted. The relations between innovation inputs and innovation outputs have been studied on the example of selected groups of countries (the group of European innovative leaders and Serbia with neighboring countries) through the correlation analysis. Key words: innovation, innovation inputs, innovation outputs, innovation efficiency.