European Union, as well as many other countries has recognized the importance of investing in Research and development (R&D) sector. Investing in R&D is a long-term investment in planned areas with the goal of profit return, stability and creating new skills, innovations and technologies. By investing in R&D a state can acquire comparative advantage on the market, increase employment, influence better living standard, which also means higher GDP per capita. Namely, only investing and spending gained funds is not sufficient. Correct implementation of funds is the most important. That is, it is crucial to invest gained resources in a correct manner to achieve pre-set goals. In comparison to other countries of European Union and the world, Croatia really has low rate of investments in R&D and is one of the least innovative countries which ranks it at the bottom of innovation scale. Also for that reason, investments of foreign companies in Croatia are scarce. It is called foreign direct investments (FDI). Unfortunately, Croatia does not represent a country safe for investments. On the contrary, Croatia is a synonym for a country of high-risk investments. Many research suggest that countries which invest more in R&D sector have higher FDI investments and break through from economic crisis and recession more quickly. In this paper, if we look at graphical representations, the direct link between GDP and R&D trend cannot be found. For example, GDP growth in the observed year does not necessarily mean R&D growth, but it can be concluded that the values of GDP and R&D are on significantly higher levels if we compare 2010 and 2019.