Abstract:

Innovation has become increasingly central to the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage for firms, as well as to the success and prestige of nations. Information and Communication Technology(ICT) is of particular significance to national technological capability for its intrinsic contribution to knowledge, its role in enabling other high technology fields, and for its ability to enhance the performance of industries traditionally viewed as medium and low technology. In this paper we study the ICT industry in Poland to get a better fix on innovation in this critical field, in a large transition nation and recent entrant into the European Union. We develop a framework for innovation comprised of the National, Regional, Local, and Corporate levels. We employ this as a template to investigate innovation in three layers-ICT, high tech, and society-wide. Three sets of secondary data pertaining to Poland are analyzed, leading to the conclusion that Poland’s innovation performance needs radical improvement on all three interdependent counts. Recommendations are made based on the more effective management of
diverse societal interfaces, as well as the judicious management of a mix of the four innovation systems .