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This article examines financial support (especially EU Structural Funds as the main tool of cohesion policy) for investments as a lever for the development of SME innovativeness in Poland. The European Commission strongly stresses the importance of their cohesion policy and support for SMEs. European enterprises have suffered significantly from the credit crunch, and the situation could worsen as banks engage in restructuring to eliminate impaired assets from their balance sheets. Supporting SMEs and promoting entrepreneurship is essential for economic development and competitiveness, especially in less developed regions. The main aim of this study is to establish the impact of financial support for investments, especially from EU Structural Funds, on SME competitiveness in Poland. We have analyzed empirically the data drawn from CATI carried out among 805 firms. We have learned how SMEs assess the financial support from different sources along with the resulting impact on the competitiveness of SMEs. The main statistical test for relationships and dependencies was the chi-square independence test and Cramer's V. The results of our research show that SMEs have not used financial support efficiently. Moreover, micro-enterprises were shown to be the least effective after receiving financial support from EU funds. This support often has a demand-driven effect, but it does not improve firm competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Innovation is a very important pillar within a knowledge-based economy, in the regional and local perspective as well. A literature review on innovation and SME innovation strategies to their correlation and the possibility of their joint examination. Purpose of the article: The aim of this paper is to explore the SME's innovation strategies and their impact on effectiveness of innovation in a peripheral region. We investigate the effects of innovation activities not only among small and medium, but also micro firms which are not covered in official innovation surveys by the national statistical offices. We proposed a model of implementing innovation, and tested our hypotheses. Methods: Research was based on data drawn from CATIs carried out among 419 firms, therefore making a conceptual contribution to the knowledge on innovation strategy. The main statistical test for relationships and dependencies was the chi-square independence test. To arbitrate whether there were statistically significant differences between medians due to different factors among enterprises, analysis for variance (H Kruskal-Wallis' test for k independent samples) procedure was implemented. Findings & Value added: The results of our research show that among SMEs in peripheral regions dominated those which we call 'pragmatists' and 'imitators' in context of their approach towards innovation. The significance of objective factors showed that there was a lack of enterprises that could play the role of 'creators of innovation' in the peripheral region. However, the examined firms more often noticed positive than negative aspects of introduced innovations, which is determined by the scale of enterprise; they were focused mainly on the consequences of innovation for their products and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to identify the determinants of innovation of enterprises in the Regional Innovation System context. We analyse factors that determine regional innovation in a less developed region, taking the Podkarpackie region in Poland as our empirical counterpart. We examine how the EU economic policy instruments influence the innovation of enterprises within the context of the Regional Innovation Systems. We propose a model for the implementation of innovations and test our hypotheses based on the data drawn from the period of 2011-2014. The paper provides insights on a rather successful story from Poland. We posit that enterprises use only specific public policy instruments and that companies' demand for innovation-supporting instruments changes, reacting to the business cycle phase and to financial incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]