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According to Schumpeter’s innovation theory of profit, the innovation is placed as a core element of an entrepreneur strategy to reduce costs or rise the demand for products, thus to increase the profit. A lot of industry research results verify that theory positively proving that financing innovations leads to the return of 20%, up to 50% at the case of successfully commercialised solutions, depending on the case and the method of measuring the impact. However, these reasons show not only how important is the issue of innovations in business theory and practice, but also cause some problems referring mainly to the identification, implementation and assessment of innovation outputs. These problems are appropriate for all industries, including logistics, which 10% share in GDP in average makes this area of business activity worthy to research. Up to date the logistics literature deals with the mentioned problems of innovations in analytical and separate way, with little attention to a conceptual approach. For instance, there is still a discussion on what can be named as an innovation in logistics, no systematisation works have been done to classify innovations and neither identification nor assessment methodology standards have been created and then applied in logistics practice. Based on the above reasons, the purpose of this article is to formulate a contingency approach as the author proposition to deal with one of the above-mentioned problems, namely identification of innovations for logistics. Thus, the thesis of this article states that the contingency approach is the right method to identify logistics innovations. Due to the nature of contingency approach, the main method to perform the mentioned purpose of this article is a literature review, an analysis of the actual propositions, and creation of conception of the contingency approach for identification logistics innovations. It is supported by modelling method at the form of block scheme of this approach. The proposed thesis is verified according to the confirmation method, by the course of logical reasoning at the form of reduction, induction, and deduction to positively justify the formulated conception. The obtained results of the research process are included at two meritorious chapters of the article. At the first one, actual ideas, conceptions and approaches are analysed. Based on the findings the contingency approach is conceptualised and suggested as the most appropriate attitude to identify logistics innovations at the next chapter. These two chapters are supported by discussion and conclusions, where limitations of the contingency approach are also included.

Keywords: Logistics, innovations, contingency

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