Zeszyty naukowe
Autor: Władysław Janasz, Katarzyna Kozioł, Arkadiusz Świadek 17
Strony: 17-54
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INNOVATION – REGION – EUROPE

Summary
Innovation activity is considered to be at the moment the basis of intensive and balanced development of countries, regions, cities and outskirts. Self-governing territorial units which conduct a policy of technological structure’s active shaping make industrial changes more dynamic, by stimulation of both processes of implementation and modern product and process solutions’ diffusion. In contrast, economic sub-systems, in which the benefits of innovations are not appreciated, often become more peripheral. This phenomenon contributes, unfortunately, to increasing economic divergence among geographical areas, regardless of their aggregation level. Some countries develop more intensively than others, as well as regions, sectors, connurbations or outskirts.
The following factors led to a broad discussion on the necessity of defining a new programme of EU’s economic reforms: new challenges connected with globalization and growing competitiveness of other world economies, e.g. the USA, Japan, China; emergence of structural barriers for economic growth in EU countries and its slow down; high level of unemployment and a prospect of EU’s enlargement. In consequence, a new strategy was accepted by the European Union in Lisbon in March 2000. This strategy has become the most important social-economic programme of the EU.
The main aim of the Lisbon Strategy was to make the most competitive economy in the world on the territory of Europe. The strategy focuses on four issues: innovation (economy based on knowledge), liberalization (of telecommunications, energy, transport markets as well as financial markets), entrepreneurship (changes to establish and conduct a business easier) and social cohesion (forming a new active social state). The vast majority of activities concerning the Lisbon Strategy is connected with the modernization of an employment policy and making positive changes in a job market. The basic message is the facilitation of conducting a business, particularly in the sector of small and middle enterprises since it is where the highest number of workplaces is created. According to the Lisbon Strategy, in order to fulfill the needs of modern economies of member states it is necessary to transform an aducation system so that it was possible to make an economic model based on knowledge.
A region plays a particularly important role as far as broadly understood innovation dynamics is concerned. It is claimed that the state level did not meet its expectations connected with effective development of processes of new technologies’ creation. It is also said that coordination of these processes is possible only on a regional or sectoral level. Others suggest the primacy of overnational approach. These theses are more complementary than of a substitution character, however, the raised issues are not and should not be interpreted unambiguously, due to increasing changeability and heterogeneity of economic arrangements at different levels of observation.
The problems of regional innovation systems can be reduced to a few fundamental boundary conditions: regionalization and centralization; selectivity or its lack; coordination or steering; process or structural approach; new or traditional technologies; small and middle or big enterprises; co-operation among enterprises or between R&D area and economic units.