A study of two Sectoral Innovation Systems in Poland within the AEGIS project
Within the three and a half years FP7 project "AEGIS - Advancing Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Economic Growth and Social Well-being in Europe" CASE experts Richard Woodward, Elzbieta Wojnicka and Wojciech Pander published "Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship and Opportunities in Two Polish Industries". The AEGIS project aims to study the interactions between knowledge, innovation, economic growth and social well-being in Europe. It focuses on knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship as a necessary mechanism and an agent of change mediating between the creation of knowledge and its transformation into economic activity.
The authors review three sets of opportunities facing firms in these industries: market, technological, and institutional opportunities. Both of these industries appear to be more innovative, and produce more patents, than Polish industry as a whole; their effectiveness in obtaining public assistance is also above average. The software industry is a young and dynamically growing one everywhere, and Poland is no exception. Companies in the industry tend to be young and very small. In Poland, they are very focused on the domestic market and play the role of “knowledge customizers” rather than “knowledge creators”. According to the authors, compared internationally, even with other post-communist countries in East Central Europe, the Polish software industry appears to have a low R&D intensity. Companies in the machine tool industry are rather larger and somewhat older, and the industry is stable rather than growing in terms of turnover (and declining in terms of employment). Perhaps surprisingly, they are also more innovative and somewhat more export-oriented. However, an international comparison reveals firms in both of these Polish industries to be less innovative than their counterparts in other European countries.
For the full report see CASE Network Studies and Analyses No. 440 "Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship and Opportunities in Two Polish Industries"
