Diversification of innovation strategies of Polish industrial processing enterprises depending on their size after the global financial crisis.

• Author: Jakimowicz, Aleksander

INTRODUCTION

The issue of diversity in the innovation strategy of Polish enterprises in industrial processing is a complex economic problem due to a number of factors to be considered in the study. This article extensively researches the problem, including the relationships between and co-occurrence of sixty-three variables. Statistical data were from 2012-2014, thus after the exogenous innovation shock which was a result of the global financial crisis. The period under consideration is particularly interesting due to prevailing innovation pessimism as well as corporate efforts to overcome it.

In the research part of the article, the relationships between the variables and their co-occurrence are analyzed. The main determinant of innovation activity of firms proved to be their type, i.e. divided into small, medium-sized and large enterprises. That was to be expected since the typology mentioned hinges upon the number of employees, annual turnover and/or annual balance sheet total, which means the supply of enterprises with factors of production (labor and capital). The higher availability of production factors leads to greater chances for innovation because market competition forces their implementation. The dependencies were tested between the enterprise type and such variables as the geographic scope of the market in which it operates, the forms of innovation activity, types of innovation implemented, methods of developing products and process innovations, barriers to innovation, as well as the benefits of eco-innovation for the environment obtained both while producing goods or providing services and through the use of a purchased product or service by end users. Only the variables pertaining to forms of innovation activity had no confirmed dependencies, which is natural since only innovative firms were studied. However, in this case, the data also shed light on the diversity in innovation strategy of an enterprise depending on its size. Another issue to study was the co-occurrence of variables describing the innovation activity of firms, barriers to innovation and types of enterprises. It allowed multiple surprising relationships between the variables to be discovered, with some confirming the conclusions arrived at earlier and some disproving them. Statistical data analysis was performed using Statistica 13.3 software.

Based on empirical and theoretical studies, a research gap has been identified, consisting in insufficient identification of factors determining innovation strategies of Polish industrial processing enterprises after the global financial crisis. This concerns, in particular, investigation of the reasons behind an overall reluctance to innovate, the importance of barriers to innovation and identifying new ideas of enterprises towards innovations in the present conditions. The primary added value consists in presenting the complexity of the problem and multi-level relations between the examined variables, explaining the low willingness of enterprises to invest, discovering the relatively low importance of barriers to innovation and the emergence of a new strategy oriented towards eco-innovations.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The dependency between the innovation activity of companies and changes in the economic situation is relatively strong, yet inconclusive (Kijek, 2018). As claimed in the literature on the subject, the global financial crisis proved that the innovative Polish companies discussed here turned out to be not very resistant to negative external shocks. From the perspective of susceptibility of companies to changes in the economic situation, one needs to single out two time periods: the global financial crisis of 2008-2010 and the gradual economic recovery of 2010-2012. In the first time period, firms rarely used innovation resources, which led to a sudden decrease in innovation commercialization indicators--that is why it is dubbed an innovation crisis. In the second time period, the decrease in innovation commercialization rates was smaller, but at the same time, a reduction in the frequency of use of innovation resources by firms was noted, which indicated a sense of uncertainty and pessimism regarding further possibilities of the growth of markets for innovative products. Thus, the years 2010-2012 are called a period of innovation pessimism (Wziatek-Kubiak & Peczkowski, 2019). The innovation activity of foreign companies was subject to similar changes.

Considering the innovation strategies of companies during the economic crisis, one may encounter the view that maintaining persistent innovation activity in the studied period may considerably help it to increase the survivability of an enterprise and its competitive capacity in the last stages of an economic slowdown. In addition, increased frequency of the use of innovation resources in times of crisis can alleviate its effects and shorten an innovation pessimism period. Certain consistency across innovation strategies, before and in a crisis, increases the resistance of companies to external shocks and reduces the likelihood of disturbances in the path of innovation during a downturn. The major role of good relations between the management and trade unions is also highlighted as well as of labor relations in improving the company's survivability of a crisis (Antonioli et al., 2013). The persistence of innovation in times of crisis may be sustained through both public support for enterprises and their own innovation strategies. In Italy, for instance, one may observe limitation of the said persistence primarily to process innovation (Antonioli & Montresor, 2018).

The issue of innovation in enterprises plays a central role in the European Union's development plans. The basic priorities of the Europe 2020 Strategy include smart growth, sustainable growth, and inclusive growth. The first of these concerns the development of a knowledge- and innovation-based economy, increasing the potential of the digital economy caused by higher investment expenditures for research and development, and improvement of the educational quality (Gasz, 2014). This requires allocating 3% of the European Union GDP for development and growth investments (Europe 2020: A European strategy..., 2010). It can be observed that the Gross Domestic Expenditure on the R&D indicator (GERD) and its dynamics have varied significantly in individual EU countries in recent years. In 2010-2016, its highest values, fluctuating around the threshold determined by the Europe 2020 Strategy, were recorded in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and Austria. In Poland, this indicator demonstrated a growing trend, changing from 0.56 in 2007 to 1.03 in 2017. In 2017, GERD for the entire European Union was 2.07%, which indicated a rather low probability of reaching the target value of 3% in 2020 (Eurostat, 2019). However, it turns out that failing to meet this condition does not impede the innovation capability of enterprises too much, as with the development of digitalization the number of patents granted by the European Patent Office has increased throughout the entire European Union (MacGregor Pelikanova, 2019).

The issues of innovation, economic growth and development, and welfare are closely related to entrepreneurship (Raport z badania..., 2018). It appears that innovative entrepreneurs, measured by the level of innovation in the initial phase of their entrepreneurial activity (TEA--Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity), are the most numerous in the European countries with the highest rates of economic growth and higher levels of real national income. However, the research also indicates the absence of a close relationship between a higher degree of entrepreneurial activity, consisting in the establishment of new companies, and economic development, which may result from the varied motivations of entrepreneurs in individual EU countries. It is assumed that entrepreneurs of the Schumpeter type, i.e. innovators applying creative destruction, are prevalent in developed countries, which naturally contributes to economic growth, while less innovative shopkeepers are the most common in developing countries (Crudu, 2019; Block, Fisch, & van Praag, 2017).

Studies of the Norwegian economy demonstrated that from the perspective of the innovation of enterprises, their endowment with a set of unique resources or assets and the ability to operate in an innovation-friendly socio-economic environment are of critical importance. It appears that factors affecting the probability of undertaking innovation included four attributes related to the enterprise and two attributes of a regional nature. The most important characteristics concerning the enterprises included their size, industrial sector, availability of R&D staff, and own-financed research and development work, while the environmental features were related to the size and the quality of the region. The most important factor affecting the probability of innovation proved to be the size of the enterprise. Larger enterprises turned out to be more innovative than the smaller ones. This observation is consistent with basic economics, as sizeable enterprises can allocate much larger resources or assets to their innovative activity than smaller enterprises. With regard to the business sector, it was found that although the probability of innovation was similar in all industry sectors, it proved to be significantly lower in commercial and transport sectors. The availability of research and development personnel increases the probability of innovation, but this effect is not significantly higher in comparison to enterprises that do not have such staff. On the other hand, internal financing of research and development works demonstrated a great positive effect on enterprises undertaking innovation (Lorentzen & Jakobsen, 2016).

The size of the enterprise is one of the most important internal properties, indicating its ability to...