Emerging market startups engage Silicon Valley: Cases from Central and Eastern Europe

This article examines the challenges and opportunities of innovation-driven growth in Central and Eastern Europe. Drawing on firm-level survey research, we analyze the experiences of early stage Polish companies in Silicon Valley. We focus on the Polish Silicon Bridge, an international bridge organization that differs from conventional business incubators and accelerators by embedding emerging market startup companies in foreign innovation hubs. We situate the analysis in the context of the “Polish Paradox”. While Poland ranks as one of the European Union’s fastest growing economies over the past two decades, it is one of the EU’s weakest performers measured by innovation. The Silicon Bridge program aims to expand Poland’s innovation capacity by placing promising local startups in the world-class ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Area. Our empirical study demonstrates that international bridge organizations generate significant benefits–knowledge acquisition, mentoring, networking with prospective investors and strategic partners–for young emerging market companies seeking to enter the global market. The article thus augments the scholarly literature on global innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial internationalization, and emerging market startups

Employment Restructuring in Polish Companies During Economic Transition: Some Comparisons with Western Experience

This paper summarizes the results of a survey of downsizing practices in 90 Polish manufacturing companies. Unlike Russia, where very few employment reductions have been carried out, downsizing in Polish companies is pervasive and appears to be accelerating. The factors that drive downsizing in a transition economy like Poland are not the same as those in the west. Nonetheless, the results of this study indicate that downsizing in Poland has had mostly beneficial effects on company functioning

Design status of ASPIICS, an externally occulted coronagraph for PROBA-3

The "sonic region" of the Sun corona remains extremely difficult to observe with spatial resolution and sensitivity sufficient to understand the fine scale phenomena that govern the quiescent solar corona, as well as phenomena that lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which influence space weather. Improvement on this front requires eclipse-like conditions over long observation times. The space-borne coronagraphs flown so far provided a continuous coverage of the external parts of the corona but their over-occulting system did not permit to analyse the part of the white-light corona where the main coronal mass is concentrated. The proposed PROBA-3 Coronagraph System, also known as ASPIICS (Association of Spacecraft for Polarimetric and Imaging Investigation of the Corona of the Sun), with its novel design, will be the first space coronagraph to cover the range of radial distances between ~1.08 and 3 solar radii where the magnetic field plays a crucial role in the coronal dynamics, thus providing continuous observational conditions very close to those during a total solar eclipse. PROBA-3 is first a mission devoted to the in-orbit demonstration of precise formation flying techniques and technologies for future European missions, which will fly ASPIICS as primary payload. The instrument is distributed over two satellites flying in formation (approx. 150m apart) to form a giant coronagraph capable of producing a nearly perfect eclipse allowing observing the sun corona closer to the rim than ever before. The coronagraph instrument is developed by a large European consortium including about 20 partners from 7 countries under the auspices of the European Space Agency. This paper is reviewing the recent improvements and design updates of the ASPIICS instrument as it is stepping into the detailed design phase

Meeting the New Competition in the Enlarged European Union – Can IT Exporters Provide a Model of Adjustment for Central European Companies? ACES Working Paper 2004.2, February 2004

The success of the upcoming fifth enlargement of the Europeana Union will to a large degree depend on how effectively locally owned businesses adjust to the challenges of the new competition resulting from full integration. The paper first assesses the overall level of preparedness of locally owned companies in the Central European (CE) countries to join the EU in May 2004 as compared to the advantages enjoyed by EU-15 firms. While the overall level of preparedness of CE companies is low, some firms in high-tech sectors such as IT have developed more advanced internationalization strategies, giving them a better position to survive in the new environment. The second half of the paper presents the results of a survey of the competitiveness of IT exporting companies from the CE region. The paper concludes that a number of the companies from the IT sector are pursuing aggressive strategies of internationalization and product differentiation that could become a model for many Central European companies to emulate

Co rozpętało I wojnę światową – scherzo venerologico

Znakomita większość historyków jest zgodna, iżbezpośrednią przyczyną wybuchu I wojny światowejbyło zastrzelenie habsburskiego następcy tronu– arcyksięcia Franciszka Ferdynanda. Zabójstwaarcyksięcia (oraz jego małżonki) w Sarajewie dokonałGawriło Princip podczas oficjalnej wizyty związanejz manewrami wojskowymi w dniu 28 czerwca1914 roku. Atak był dziełem grupy Bośniaków, poddanychAustro-Wegier, którzy zostali przeszkoleniw Serbii i za zgodą władz serbskich wyjechali z Belgradudo Sarajewa w celu dokonania zamachu [1]

Small Farms as “Data Producers” for the Needs of Agricultural Management Information System

In the face of current global threats, including the COVID-19 Pandemic, new technological solutions are needed. Globalization, progressing urbanization, the decreasing availability of cultivable land for food production, water contamination, flood risk and climate change, can all be viewed as potential threats to food safety. According to forecasts and trends, the future of both agricultural policy and agricultural innovation will be based on big data, data analytics and machine learning. Therefore, it is and will continue to be important to develop information systems dedicated to agricultural innovation and the management of food security challenges. The main aim of the study is a classification of data for a uniform AMIS from data from IREIS, GC and AIIS based on survey and expert interview data obtained. We propose to expand the range of data produced by small farmers while keeping in mind the protection of farmers and their rights and the possible benefits of the data provided. The literature recognizes the value of such data but it has not yet been legally regulated, protected, managed and, above all, properly used for agricultural and food security policy purposes. Therefore, we develop the idea of extended farmers’ participation in the production of agricultural activity data. The research used a survey questionnaire and expert interviews. A viable AIIS needs current data that farmers already produce as well as additional data needs which we identify in our research. We propose an architecture of databases and describe their flow in the Agriculture Management Information System (AMIS)

Poland’s innovation strategy: how smart is ‘smart specialisation’?

Poland urgently needs to look to new sources of economic growth, particularly through strengthening of R&D in the economy. European investment funds will be critical for this, with a strong emphasis on the novel policy concept of smart specialisation. The paper assesses the opportunities and challenges of this approach, providing a diagnosis of the state of R&D&I system and the current state implementation of smart specialisation strategies (RIS3) in Poland. It finds that awareness of the RIS3 concept is still weak among Polish stakeholders at a regional level and that the involvement of enterprises, researchers and local governments in the process of 'entrepreneurial discovery' will be a key challenge for Poland, as will be the implementation of evaluation and monitoring systems. The article concludes with a discussion of the problems that need to be resolved to reap the full benefits of a smart specialisation approach and discusses some of its limitations