Can local knowledge workers significantly contribute to the growth of the national level of innovation?

This paper systematically examines the role of knowledge workers on the level of innovation development in Poland. Specific hypotheses on the importance of the collaboration of knowledge workers for the growth of national innovation in two areas: knowledge creation and knowledge exploitation are examined. The study is based on a survey and interviews with 40 IT workers in small Polish businesses. The results show that cooperation between knowledge workers enables an improvement in the amount of human resources in science and technology and an increase in the number of high- and medium-tech Polish manufacturing enterprises. Specifically, the results confirm the hypothesis that the greater the amount of collaboration between knowledge workers, the higher the level of national innovation measured in these two indicators.