Przestrzenne aspekty rozwoju innowacyjnego w gminach: wyznaczniki przedsiębiorczości społecznej

Abstract

Social innovation is the main factor of social entrepreneurship. The study focuses on the analysis of this kind of local communities' activity designed to improve the quality of life of their members. The aim of the article, in accordance with the overarching research thesis, is to show the special importance of the spatial dimension and the significant role of place (location) in the analysis of entrepreneurship and social innovation. In order to identify the differences between the resources of endogenous development, which uses the potential of territorial units (here: rural communes as opposed to municipalities), a set of relevant indicators was selected. The study used data for 2017 from the Local Data Bank of Statistics Poland. The results of the analyses confirmed the view, prevalent in the literature, that rural communes, especially those located further from large agglomerations, have a comparatively weaker potential for entrepreneurship. At the same time, thanks to the application of spatial statistics methods, a tendency to form clusters was observed among communes developed to a similar extent and displaying a similar potential for entrepreneurship. In other words, what was observed was the 'neighbourhood effect', which, however, varied in intensity across the country's regions.