Regional innovation system and policy in Malopolska, Poland : an institutionalised learning

This chapter adopts a positive perspective in policy research (Uyarra, 2010; González-López, 2019) to describe the processes of formulating, adjusting and implementing the innovation policies in Malopolska, after Poland's accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004. As a context for policy analysis, the region's innovation system has been synthesised to include its structure and major indicators compared with those in Poland and the EU. The aim of this study is to present the evolution of the regional innovation system and policies in Malopolska, Poland as a learning process. Based on the theoretical background of innovation systems and policy learning, as well as new institutional economics, we focus our analysis on the dynamics of the Malopolska innovation system, the ways the policies form the regional specialisation and promote entrepreneurial discovery and innovation, and the types of learning that have stimulated evolution of the region's innovation policies. Our findings point to the increasingly positive potential of the Malopolska innovation system (input characteristics) and its less positive but improving performance (output characteristics). In this context, we identify formalised learning that stems from regulations, institutional hierarchy and academic research as the major driver of policy evolution. When analysing the changing policy objectives, measures, and budgets, we note the positive outcomes of this learning. First, the industrial specialization of Malopolska evolved from an unfocused approach involving combination of the dominant knowledge base and industries of new opportunities, following the smart specialisation (SS) concept. Second, policy measures and budgets are increasingly targeted towards entrepreneurship support. Further positive evolution of the region's system and policies requires strengthening the interaction and synergies between the dominant and emerging areas of specialisation and enhancing the collaborative links among businesses as well as among businesses and academia. This research provides a contribution to the knowledge on policy learning in terms of regional transformation towards new paths (Asheim, 2019; Isaksen et al., 2019; Hassink et al., 2019) and it also assists with understanding how regional specialisation evolves towards SS (Foray, 2014; McCann and OrtegaArgilés, 2015).