A dilemma in innovation is becoming more and more obvious every day. The ideology of free enterprise and the market economy suggest that policy-makers do not touch the mechanisms of competition or business development. It is held that public interventions, such as subsidies, low-interest loans or grants, deter free competition and cause imbalances in the market. At the same time, the needs of individual enterprises to get support in their pursuit of innovations are acknowledged. The purpose of this article is to report on an inventory of measures employed to overcome barriers to innovation in Czech start-ups (SMEs.) It examines the impact of such variables as actions for continuous improvement, pressures for cost-cutting, aspects of internal management systems, innovativeness, and structures for managing product and process innovation in Czech SMEs.