Exploring potential drivers of innovation-related activities in Poland: evidence from Polish business clusters

Research background: Innovations are introduced by competitive companies. One of the most common methods, increasingly used by companies, is organizing clusters or cluster initiatives operating within a specialized sector, competing with each other, exploiting the potential of cooperation and its impact on creating new business ideas. However, these efforts could be unviable due to the lack of an effective leader of the group. One should underline a crucial role of the leader in such an organized network, since the leader makes improvements and takes initiatives for all the network and its partners. These concepts prompt us to undertake the research on the role of clusters? characteristics on enhancing willingness to innovate in general. This study aims to point out the main characteristics of clusters and to investigate their impact on companies? innovativeness. The main problem to address is the magnitude of specific effects that might boost introducing new solutions in firms? networks. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of factors describing cluster environment (characteristics like cooperation within clusters and beyond them, incentives of a leader, and localization factors) that might affect the innovativeness of companies. Methods: The authors collected data using questionnaire. This type of primary source enables the authors to construct a model consisting of latent variables such as incentives of coordinator of cluster or cluster initiative, cooperation of firms with local authorities, cooperation between entrepreneurs, or localization. The results are subject to the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis. Findings & value added: The conducted analysis leads to several findings. Firstly, incentives provided by the cluster coordinator enable companies to increase the willingness to introduce innovations in general. Secondly, however, the influence of other cluster characteristics on the propensity to innovate for firms functioning within specific Polish business clusters is scant. These findings point to the fact that actions leading to assign the official coordinator of a cluster need to be done, as it should result in better flow of knowledge, more symmetric information among companies within cluster, and more productive and innovative way of functioning firms in general. Regarding innovation clusters (and regional innovation systems), these actions need to be supported by forming policy on regional level, because effective clusters would induce more competitive regional economy in long-term scenario.