Untitled - Ministerstwo Rozwoju Regionalnego

activities more attractive (quads 1 , mini-hovercraft). However, only progressive
innovations (facilitating processes, cutting down energy consumption, improving
safety, etc.) are introduced into national and regional transport systems.
Innovation is a social phenomenon that entails creating pro-innovative culture,
entrepreneurial activities, social acceptance and recognizing the innovation
as a key element of economic development. Innovations created in closed scientific
circles are not very significant. Innovations affecting large groups of population
can be created only with close cooperation between science and industry,
enterprises introducing new technologies, public and local government institutions
and consumer organisations.
The motives for creating innovations are both the creative capabilities of scientific
research centres and industry as well as pressure from consumers for a
greater higher of products and services, and elimination of faults in things and
processes commonly used. Considering these two motives, we can identify the
following models of innovation processes: • technology push innovation model,
• market pull innovation model, • interactive (coupling) model, • integrated
(network) model, • simultaneous (system integration) model. Observations
show that in the present-day world there is an evolutionary shift from technology
push or market pull to integrated and system models. This is manifested by
new organisational forms of innovation processes, i.e. technology platforms 2 .
In the modern world, innovative intensity is not distributed evenly, neither
in spatial nor in sectoral scales. There are regions or conurbations being traditional
cradles or driving forces of innovation: the famous Silicon Valley 3 , the
European autocluster BelCAR 4 (Stuttgart Region, East Anglia, Upper Austria,
Lombardy, Catalonia), Kansai Science City 5 , Japan (situated halfway between Tokyo
and Osaka), Tsukuba Science City 6 , Japan, and others 7 . There are also
a number of ambitious initiatives to build from scratch some innovation centres
in selected regions (RIS - Regional Innovation Strategy), whose importance,
against the existing well-known innovation-cultivating regions, cannot be over-
1 See: eMoto – http://www.emoto.com.pl/1078_quady_atv.html; All-terrain vehicle –
http://www.all-terrain-vehicle.info.
2 Transport innovations in Europe are created by such technology platforms as ERRAC,
ERTRAC,WATERBORNE and ACARE.
3 Silicon Valley – http://www.siliconvalley.com.
4 See: BeLCAR News – http://www.autocluster.hu/ikreator/acl/cms_pub/file_00000544/
1st%20newsletter.pdf; Europe INNOVA Annual Report 2008 – http://www.europe-innova.org.
5 Kansai Science City – http://www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=636.
6 Tsukuba Science City – http://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/english/about/tsukuba.html.
7 See: J. Lane: Technopoles of the World: The Making of 21st Century Industrial Complexes –
http://www.allbusiness.com/professional-scientific/scientific-research/485115-1.html;
ence Cities set out their stalls – http://www.eubusiness.com/Rd/science-cities.01.
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