Open Innovation in SMEs: An Empirical Exploration of Entrepreneurs’ Attitudes

The article presents the results of representative survey, carried out on the basis of standardized interviews with representatives of small and medium-sized enterprises from all over Poland, which are intended to analyze how SMEs dealt with the implementation of innovation. The main assumption of the research was to accept the thesis that one of the most important factors enabling the management of innovation-implementing SMEs, nowadays, could only be the ability to cooperate and combine resources of many partners and cooperators. Thus, a study was undertaken to examine how intellectual capital, with particular emphasis on relationships, was perceived and evaluated by companies in that context. The purposed hypothesis issued that innovative enterprises are characterized by better use of external resources and the ability to engage more external entities, as well as a higher assessment of their importance This hypothesis was partially confirmed by data analysis, which contained the approach that the concept of Open Innovation is not clearly understood and realized in the surveyed SMEs.