Process of forming the innovative potential in companies of SMEs in steel constructions sector in competitive conditions on the EU market

Abstract

The SMEs companies form the biggest part of all companies carrying out production in the Polish economic reality. The changes in enterprises, such as faster initiation of innovations or new technical, technological, and organization solutions, etc. were involved in the development and competitiveness of these companies and competitiveness of the whole branch - and in the same way, in the whole economy at the time of integration with the EU economy and globalization. Then, the knowledge about reasons and dynamics and structure of innovative changes in enterprises will provide the possibility to show the groups of factors involved in the innovative process, which is important for the enterprises and for the branch.

The presentation of innovative potential as definitions and measurement was based on the research of a group of SMEs, consisting of Polish and foreign enterprises. The main goal of the research was to explain the reason for FDI in the Polish branch of steel constructions and the influence of FDI on innovativeness of the Polish SMEs.

The obtained results allowed to define the factors with high influence coefficient for innovative potential in steel construction branch as inside and outside values, the readiness to realize the innovative activity, and skills of effective realization of all parts of the innovative process and knowledge absorption. In conditions of competitiveness on the EU market - where dynamic changes of quantity of participants and increase in the expectation of clients are observed - there are clearly growing meanings of the innovative process. In the present time of EU integration, there are quite new, additional factors in Polish SMEs, such as skills in building the relation between SMEs and abilities to create nets and clusters, and readiness for many different and changing forms of cooperation and growth at the level of knowledge.