Small and medium sized enterprises (SME) play an important role in the economies of numerous emerging economies. Despite the fact that the SME sector plays a significant role in the national economy it still suffers from the underdeveloped financial sector services. It results in the lower levels of indebtedness of private sector in Poland in relation to such emerging economies like Malaysia, Estonia or Chile. The commercial financial sector is inefficient in delivering funds to SME, the important role in this area is played by regional policy, especially supported from European regional funds. The distribution of development funds is realized with serious problems because SME are reluctant to financial sector services and besides typical grants, debt-type instruments meet serious problems. Polish SME are also reluctant to use support instruments aimed at developing innovations, R&D, and intellectual property (IP) protection. Imitation model of growth still dominates among Polish SME. To address this issue, in 2014 the University of Gdansk (UG) launched a project, supported by National Science Centre (NCN, governmental), on using behavioural interventions to increase the propensity of Polish SME to apply more ambitious development measures through support instruments. The research revealed, that the majority of tested behavioural interventions aimed at building friendly support environment proved to be efficient and increased the interest of SME in developmental activities.

The aim of the paper is to present an overview of the theoretical basis and stages of the process of opportunities exploration and exploitation in the development of innovativeness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and its preliminary empirical verification on the basis of experience derived from economic practice. The aim of the paper is realized based on the author’s own empirical research carried out in the form of a case study conducted among 5 innovative SME companies in Poland. The results indicate that the analyzed companies associate opportunities directly with entrepreneurship and the development of innovative activity. They take various actions that are part of theoretical principles of effective opportunities exploration and exploitation, which allows them to obtain a number of pro-innovative benefits and which supports the creation of competitive advantage.

For a long time creativity, innovativeness and entrepreneurship have been at the heart of studies on economic growth of regions and cities. In the paper the three notions are scrutinised together to propose conceptual approach to establishing research and development pathways, based upon three-stage identification of: research problems, project patterns and relational mechanisms. The paper is concluded with a 63 Box – the approach helping to navigate throughout project preparation phase.

The contemporary world is marked by clear disproportions in terms of living, working and wage. This problem also applies to Poland, including the layout designated by cities. The quantitative analysis carried out proves that the identified disproportions in the development potential have a relatively permanent character, which gives them structural attribute. In this context, the desirable effectiveness of development policy (subordinate to the vision and funds of EU cohesion policy) becomes highly questionable. Today’s economic inclusion is a serious challenge to the failure of recognized development policies. The shaping of the socio-economic order of the state requires a new look at local development, starting from a reliable diagnosis, part of which is this study, to bold and real visions.

Dynamic changes and the increasing diversity of migrant societies support small-scale enclave businesses in Poland. Female migrants from Belarus and Ukraine appear to have found their niche in the beauty and cosmetology sector. Nevertheless, their entrepreneurship goes beyond the enclave market. Specialists provide services to migrant communities and simultaneously target Polish clients to ensure the success of their ventures. This article presents the results of qualitative research based on 13 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian and Belarusian beauty specialists. I focus on these businesswomen’s narratives about their entrepreneurial trajectories. My aim is to explore how they use and extend their social relationships in order to acquire entrepreneurial agency. Entrepreneurship can be understood as a socially embedded practice. I apply an intersectionality approach to investigate the complexity of socially constructed identities and the dimensions of individual entrepreneurial agency. Incorporating a mixed embeddedness approach, I examine the impact of structural factors on entrepreneurial activity and the importance of social networks for women’s self-realisation as independent beauty specialists.

Many analysis of growth poles do not refer directly to development and dynamics of propulsive activities, but rather to their effects. In this paper the author concluded that essential role may be played by fast-growing and knowledge-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) while their intra-regional diversity of activity may be a reasonable proxy measure of a role played by specific town as a growth centre. Therefore the article has two main goals: methodical – determining the usefulness of the activity of fast-growing and (potentially) innovative small and medium enterprises as a designatum for the growth pole and cognitive – to capture the spatial differences in the distribution of this kind of SMEs in Podkarpackie region. The study showed strong diversification of the number of fast-growing and (potentially) innovative SMEs on the local level. All techniques of determining the level of economic development and it’s dynamics taken into consideration in the analysis testify to strong and rising position of Rzeszów as a regional growth pole. It indicates growing role of metropolisation processes in Poland even in case of peripheral, weakly urbanised region with a relatively small regional centre compared to the biggest Polish cities.

Whilst the extant scholarship offers a detailed exploration of why return migrants enter self-employment or engage in business initiatives in general, we know relatively little about their involvement in transnational economic activities which connect the previous destination coun-try with the origin one and how they compare to other kinds of entrepreneurial venture in this vein. This article aims to understand these motivations by using insights from 50 semi-structured interviews conducted with traders of used cars imported in Romania, a mass phe-nomenon in the Central and Eastern European area and beyond. An important result of this research is that entrepreneurs have to consider a multitude of factors in multiple locations when entering the used-car business. The article also suggests that entrepreneurial motivations among used-car traders are not fixed but, rather, can and do change over time.