Innovativeness of Polish enterprises in the development of competitive advantage

In today's fast-paced competitive environment, firms face the need to be increasingly nimble and adaptive. Sustainable competitive advantage no longer arises from positioning or resources. They need to embrace the notion of transient advantage, learning to launch new strategic initiatives again and again, and creating a portfolio of advantages that can be built quickly and abandoned just as rapidly. This has led firms to move to a new paradigm of competitiveness, namely solutions innovation. A constant source of innovation, used to build transient advantage, becomes a new source of competitive advantage. Innovation thus becomes the most important tool for competition. The aim of this article was to analyse the effect of innovation on the competitiveness of firms and to assess the level of innovativeness of Polish entities. The research question was whether Polish firms are competitive enough to successfully compete in today’s environment. Based on the data analysis it can be said that Polish firms are not sufficiently innovative, which has a negative effect on their competitiveness. Enterprises spent too little on innovation, and the structure of their expenditure is inappropriate.