Investments in innovation
In its post-communist period, Poland has seen positive GDP growth every year since 1992, with all but three of those years recording better than three-percent growth. In time the country has become a regional leader and a strong emerging market, but growing salaries have come to challenge one of Poland's most attractive economic attributes - low labor costs.
Polish authorities are, accordingly, working to develop new areas of the economy to compensate, with advanced technologies and services high on the list. That's where technology parks come in - combining technical infrastructure and the chance to work in close proximity to like-minded companies.
The role of tech parks
According to the article "Incubators of technology and technology parks in Poland," published this January in Nowe Życie Gospodarcze, there were 15 technology parks in the country at the end of 2007, of which five or six were in an advanced stage of development. There were also 28 initiatives at an early stage of development. However, the authors of the article, Jacek Guliński and Krzysztof Matusiak, told WBJ that one of those 28 embryonic initiatives had since progressed far enough to be described as a full-fledged tech park.
A lack of financing for these initiatives is the main reason why so few have come to fruition. The main source of funding, according to Guliński and Matusiak, comes from the European Union.
"If it were not for EU assistance, technology parks in Poland would not be in the state they are in now," said Guliński, who was deputy director of the Poznań Science and TechnologyPark until leaving at the beginning of this month. He noted that for the period until 2013, there were hundreds of millions of euros earmarked for the creation and development of service systems - tech parks and incubators - which support entrepreneurship and innovation.
Money also comes from the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, a governmental agency subordinate to the Ministry of the Economy, which has money as well as "human capital" allocated for the use of tech parks, Guliński said.
The importance of these parks for Polish innovation is crucial. "If we look at big corporations, they manage innovation on their own. And a tech park is there to help small and medium-sized firms," said Matusiak, director of the Polish Business and Innovation Centres Association.
Incubators
In addition to technology parks, incubators devoted to technology also serve to stimulate innovation in Poland. Guliński and Matusiak's article identified 16 such incubators - some of which predate Poland's tech parks - which involve around 340 business entities. Only two are managed by universities - the University of Łódź and the Warsaw University of Technology.
Most of these incubators aid firms for around two or three years, after which the companies have to make their own way, but some do not set time limits. Guliński and Matusiak estimate that approximately "700 enterprises, generating over 4,000 jobs, have already left incubators."
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Who's who in tech parks
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| Residents in Polish technology parks |
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| Type of resident | Number | Employment |
| Small technology companies |
117
|
651
|
| Other SMEs |
176
|
3,542
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| Strategic investors |
20
|
3,522
|
| Foreign companies |
16
|
539
|
| Scientific & Research institutions |
4
|
60
|
| Other |
26
|
847
|
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Source: Nowe Życie Gospodarcze
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