Cooperation for Innovation and Its Influence on Enterprises’ Innovativeness Level

Abstrakt

Innovation is one of the key sources in obtaining competitive advantage by enterprises. The ability
to innovate is generally accepted as a critical success factor for competitiveness and firms’ performance.
The paper discusses cooperation for innovation and its influence on enterprises’ innovativeness
level. The main aim of the article is to determine the relationship between cooperation for
innovation and innovativeness of the surveyed companies, which is investigated empirically. The
paper discusses the channels and level of cooperation taking place in enterprises corresponding
to its sources, specific character and determining the significance of the impact of cooperation
for innovation on the actual level of innovativeness. The specific objectives of the article relate
to examining what kind of cooperation for innovation occurs in enterprises and whether there is
a relationship between the cooperation and innovativeness level of the enterprise. The study is based
on a survey of firms (n = 100) located in Poland. The article first establishes the research framework,
then deduces the research hypothesis and finally describes the analysis tools, the sample structure
and statistical methods. The analysis has been done with the SPSS software. The statistical method
used in the survey is multiple step regression. The study has determined the positive relationship
between cooperation and innovativeness of the surveyed enterprises. The relation between cooperation
and innovativeness is positive concerning the channels of vertical cooperation, especially
in the area of cooperation with suppliers of equipment, materials, components or software. These
findings suggest that the measurement of cooperation for innovation and its channels should be developed further in order to make it a more relevant concept for empirical studies of enterprises’
innovativeness and competitiveness.