September 15 Debate DELab UW and PRB on the innovativeness of Polish enterprises

The debate was attended by the Deputy Minister of Development, Jerzy Kwieciński, representatives of the Polish Business Roundtable – Jacek Szwajcowski, Małgorzata Adamkiewicz (Adamed) and Janusz Jankowiak, as well as the author of the study – Dr. Anna Białek-Jaworska from the University of Warsaw. The discussion was led by Piotr Arak from Polityka Insight. In the DELab UW report, we focused on indicating the importance of research and development activities and commercialization of research results among the factors shaping the innovativeness of Polish enterprises, including start-ups. It is the radical product innovations created as a result of research and development activities – also in cooperation with university scientists – that contribute to the growth of companies' competitiveness, to increasing their sales and, consequently, to economic growth. Innovative activity in Poland is conducted by family companies (43%), and to a lesser extent it is transferred to subsidiaries or co-subsidiaries of the parent company in the capital group (12%). Despite the low level of spending on research and development, Poland's position on the European Innovation Scoreboard is improved by the relatively high propensity of Polish companies to invest (14th place). position in the ranking), knowledge-based assets, human resources, public sector spending on R&D and growing employment in developing sectors of the economy. We can therefore say that Poland already has the resources necessary to improve the technological advancement of our economy. Our analyses show that special attention is required to support the development of innovation in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector, cooperation between universities and business, and opportunities for financing research and development activities. It is important to increase the disclosure of information on Polish enterprises’ expenditure on R&D in order to attract investors. During the debate, the reasons for companies underreporting their research and development expenditure were highlighted, including the strong convergence of balance sheet and tax law (book-tax conformity). As many as 90% of active companies in Poland do not keep accounting books, and the balance sheet law does not require disclosure of R&D expenditures included in costs. Until May 2015, XNUMX unfavourable tax solutions limited the disclosure of expenditure on successfully completed development work classified as intangible assets (the need to depreciate them). The opinions of entrepreneurs participating in the debate, who admit to not disclosing their R&D expenditure due to the lack of benefits, confirm the results of the study indicating the hidden innovativeness of Polish enterprises. There are still insufficient incentives for companies to disclose information about their research and development activities. Therefore, it is necessary to motivate enterprises to increase the effectiveness of R&D activities by introducing a new tax relief consisting in exempting from income tax revenues from the commercialization of research and development results on foreign markets. This will encourage them to create and introduce their own innovations to the market. In order to improve Poland's position in the European Innovation Scoreboard, it is necessary to increase the disclosure of information on foreign revenues from licenses and patents and revenues from the sale of new innovations in relation to total sales.