09.05.2017
Polish voivodeships increasingly faster in the innovations race – according to „Millennium Index” report
Increase in Poland’s innovations at the global level has been accompanied by the increases at the local level – indicate Bank Millennium experts in their paper „2017 Millennium Index – Region Innovations Potential”. This year’s race was won by the mazowieckie voivodeship, however, the other voivodeships are quickly catching up with the leader.
Polish economy has a huge development potential and is becoming increasingly more innovative. Nonetheless, there are still deep differences in the pace of development of individual regions of the country. . – As „Millennium Index” is made every year, we may compare changes taking place in the same geographic areas in similar periods. We analyse diversity of the innovation potential in the broad business context and in the next stages of the study we will also examine the drivers behind the results of individual economy sectors - says Natalia Kukulska from the Sectorial Analyses Team at the Rating Department of Bank Millennium.
Four voivodeships at the lead
In this year’s ranking, the top 4 voivodeships with the highest innovation potential are the mazowieckie voivodeship (97 points), małopolskie voivodeship (88 points), dolnośląskie voivodeship (76 points) and pomorskie voivodeship (74 points), which beat the national average (68 points). These are the regions where the dominant role is played by the Warsaw, Cracow, Wrocław and Tri-city agglomerations. Their success relies on the capacity to attract the most talented and most creative individuals. These are the voivodeships with the best universities and key research and development centres. Well-developed educational offer attracts human capital and stable cooperation between business and science – financial capital.
2017 Millennium Index – Region Innovations Potential
Chasing the leader
Recently, the distance between mazowieckie voivodeship and the other three regions has been decreasing. According to the data presented by the analysts of the Bank, for a few years now, Małopolska region, dolnośląskie and pomorskie voivodeships have been dynamically and relatively faster than the ranking’s leader, increasing their R&D expenses versus GDP, as well as the number of people employed in research and development. The root causes of this phenomena are mostly the strong development of innovative industries (for instance, chemical, biotechnological and pharmaceutical sectors) and services, inter alia, modern IT business support services, shared finance and accounting services, human resources, purchases departments and research and development area.
An important driver of development of these regions are also strong special economic zones which have been successful in attracting capital, as well as expansion of the transportation and educational infrastructure. An important driver reducing the distance to the leader are also dynamically developing enterprise centres, such as technology and innovation transfer centres.
Increasingly smaller gaps between the voivodeships
Compared to the Index published last year, almost all the voivodeships (except for podkarpackie, łódzkie, śląskie, lubuskie and opolskie voivodeships) reached in the ranking higher average results thus getting closer to the leader (97 points). This means that the differences in the innovation potential between the individual regions are getting smaller.
2017 and 2016 Millennium Index – result comparison
Lubelskie the fastest
- Over the last five years, the highest increase in the innovation potential was recorded in lubelskie voivodeship. The key reason for the advance was triple increase in the number of patents issued. This explosion may have been the result of Lublin’s strong position as an academic centre. In this area, special place has been held by the Lublin University of Technology, which only in 2015 registered 98 patents and filed 97 registration applications in the Patent Office, thus taking the fourth place among the research units in Poland. Certainly, Lublin-based academic centres (apart from the Lublin University of Technology, also the University of Life Sciences and Medical University) have been effectively using high educational potential of the region – comments Urszula Kryńska, economist at Bank Millennium. Also podkarpackie voivodeship scored high in the ranking, recording a solid jump-increase in workforce productivity. It has been the consequence of the investment policy pursued by the authorities of the region focussing on innovative economy sectors, especially aeronautics and space technology.
2017 Millennium Index - 6 innovation criteria
The paper „2017 Millennium Index – Region Innovations Potential” is the starting point for developing a more in-depth report, extended by the analysis of development of the innovation potential in the voivodeships over the last 6 years and inter-sectorial comparisons. The extended edition of the report will be published in autumn this year.
Methodology: the components of „Millennium Index – Region Innovations Potential” are 6 paramount criteria of the development of innovative economy: workforce productivity, added value rate, research and development expenses (R&D), post-secondary school education, number of employees in the research and development area and number of patents issued. All the analysed criteria have equal weight and voivodeships can score maximum 100 points.