Innovativeness as main challenge for the polish economy

At the present stage of development of Poland's economy the existing possibilities of increased rate of economic growth are depleting, and above all the reserves of cheap labour, the availability of cheap raw materials, abundant inflow of EU funds, etc. There are however new threats; the growing competitiveness of the economies of China, India, and Brazil, the collapse of public finances, and adverse  changes in the natural environment, which are becoming increasingly expensive (the EU energy and climate package). Therefore one should seek new factors of competitive advantage and modernization of the economy, using mainly innovation and knowledge.

This article aims to assess the level of innovativeness of Poland's economy in comparison with other European Union countries and to answer the question concerning the possibility of development of innovation in the context of choice of appropriate strategy for strengthening the technological potential of the economy and creating conditions conducive to pro-innovative behaviour of business entities. The analysis is based on the set of indices reported by the European Commission, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and UNU-MERIT Maastricht University. Statistical studies show that the economy of Poland is not among the giants in the field of innovation and ranks far in various rankings of innovation. The analysis of Innovation Union Scoreboard 2011 shows that the value of many indices  that illustrate the level of innovativeness of Poland’s economy is below the average values for the countries of the European Union (25 among 29 indicators are lower than the EU-27 average).

The structure of the article is as follows: the introduction is followed by an assessment of the level of innovativeness of Poland's economy, and then the conditions for innovation in Poland are outlined with particular emphasis on strategic aspects and the final part presents synthetic conclusions derived from the analysis.

Key words: innovativeness, innovation