Before it's too late

It is often repeated that a well-qualified and cheap workforce will not suffice for Poland to become a successful player on the global market; that investment in innovation and R&D is integral to its future. It may be redundant, but investment figures show that words do not necessarily translate into deeds.

Poland's expenditure on R&D in 2005 was only 0.57 percent of its GDP, compared with the Czech Republic (1.42 percent) and Hungary (0.94 percent). These figures are drawn from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) recent "Policy mix for innovation in Poland - key issues and recommendations" report, prepared together with the Polish Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Not all the news is pessimistic, however. The OECD's experts claim that there are other factors stimulating a rise in innovation apart from GDP expenditure. These include private entrepreneurship, the public sector or the mobility of its labor force. According to the report, Poland has nearly all the tools to properly implement an innovation system but lacks coordination of these factors.

A key area where such coordination is critical is between the activities of the Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Science and Higher Education, suggests Dr Tomasz Brodzicki, an expert from the Gdańsk Institute for Market Economics (IBnGR), who worked on the OECD report. "Poland needs a broader agenda and stimulation of cooperation between technology and businesses," he told WBJ.

"We need to act before it is too late," is Economy Minister Piotr Woźniak's conclusion on the matter.