Studia i Prace WNEiZ US

The openness is an indispensable condition for the effective use of external knowledge resources in the process of increasing the innovativeness of business entities. Acceleration of the pace of technological progress and knowledge transfer has made the use of the open innovation model an effective way to implement the innovation strategy and competitiveness of business entities. The aim of this article is to assess the level of innovative openness of Polish start-up entities using own empirical research and original methodology. The research methods used to achieve the indicated objective consist, besides pilot questionnaire surveys, carried out on a sample of 36 start-up entities, also a critical analysis of the subject’s literature. The results of own and literature researches made it possible to assess the level of innovative openness of the Polish start-up community. As a result of the conducted research, the level of openness of Polish start-ups was defined as moderate. The method used to measure openness turned out to be a relatively simple and effective tool that can be applied in a number of research in the level and effectiveness of innovative openness.