Human Capital and Innovativeness as Means to Bridging Development Gaps. Poland and the Czech Republic as Case Studies

The aim of this article is to analyze the innovative achievements of selected economies: Polish and Czech. This issue is of fundamental significance for all post socialist countries. Post communist heritage in form of homo sovieticus is really far from innovative performance. The author assumed that innovativeness is the component of human capital whilst the conceptions of innovativeness were dealt with as the development challenge and the criterion of efficiency for contemporary economies, creating the opportunity to speed up the pace of narrowing the development gap. It is reflected in the title of the study. The methodological basis and data source are Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM 2009) and European Innovation Scorecard (EIS 2009). The fulfillment of this aim, in the author's opinion, relied on presenting the coordination of innovative actions of managing entities and underlining the growing significance of network structures. On the basis of the conducted empirical analysis encompassing the years 2003-2008, there was observed, mostly in Poland and to smaller extent in the Czech Republic, a low level of innovativeness and its unsatisfactory dynamics, as well as poor use of relatively numerous human capital for attaining goals. In the conclusion part of the article, there were presented problems connected with the necessity of consequent impact on the quality of human capital and level of innovativeness. In order to overcome barriers, the author postulates to establish a pro-innovative institutional order and indicates the need for systemic attitude towards these reforms.