Innovativeness is a value which has been debated in detail for many years, indicating both its significance in the creation of new demand and development of markets, as well as its ties with an economy based on knowledge and Polish backwardness (our country is to be found at the end of the EU ranking in terms of innovativeness). On the other hand however, it is worth being aware of the fact that in a multitude of cases, these attributes are not innovations, but traditional (classical) solutions and technologies; while in monopolies and oligopolies innovativeness does not have to be in first place. Such opinions are convergent with the later views of P.F. Drucker, who claimed that not everyone must be innovative: it is necessary not to set innovative goals before people, those responsible for maintenance, utilization and the optimization of the existing processes. He also drew attention to the fact that innovative activities that take firms away from their current activities rarely become a success.

A certain impact on the registered changes (not actual changes) in the sphere of the level of innovativeness is also exerted by ownership changes in the structure of the economy. In large foreign and international corporations present in Poland, very frequently the designing, construction and technologies are solely created by the parent organizations abroad, while the Polish employees deal exclusively with the general execution (production, sales, etc.). A further factor is the insufficient number of educated engineers and surplus of humanists, with the former being in general more innovative.

Information about how respondents perceive innovativeness in their enterprises is presented in Tables 31–32.

Table 30 reveals that 72% of respondents acknowledge innovativeness to be a value of key significance (the total responses in variants 1 and 2), although more frequently insufficiently supported rather than strongly supported. Nevertheless, almost 30% of the respondents deemed that in their organizations, competitiveness is not a value of key significance.

In joint-stock companies the pressure on innovativeness is greater than in other types of enterprises (Table 31).