Nowadays the dynamics of economic development is no longer determined exclusively by traditional resources, such as natural wealth, capital, classical industrial and agricultural branches, but increasingly by human resources, high-quality education and high-technology industries. The hightech component has become a crucial source of competitiveness and value added in practically all the branches of the national economy. At the same time, enterprises focusing on high technologies and application of high technologies in enterprises of traditional industries can develop only in an innovations-friendly economic environment supporting innovative efforts, i.e., in a country that consistently implements a national policy for developing innovations and has an effectively operating national innovation system.The aim of research is to analyse and compare the changes in the development of innovative activity in the European Union in general and Denmark in particular being one of the leaders of innovation performance in the EU and Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) for the period of 2005–2014, as well as investigate the relationships among human resources, development of innovations (SII) and economic development (GDP) of countries.