THE POTENTIAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF IMPLEMENTING SMART SPECIALISATIONS

Higher education institutions play a crucial role in social and economic life. They are responsible for disseminating specialised knowledge and developing human capital. Higher education institutions are also an important element in the national and regional innovation system. The last 20 years have been abundant in changes in higher education throughout the world, related mainly to political and technological transformations. Regional development has become a priority to be reached through smart specialisations defined at the national and regional level. Smart specialisations involve economic transformations based on: the strong points and advantages of a specific region, stakeholders' contribution and the collective identification of areas of specialisation, focussing public support on the key regional priorities, distinguished trends, challenges and needs, and tools stimulating innovativeness and experimentation. For this purpose, Regional Innovation Strategies were created, which are a more detailed version of Development Strategies for each Province to be implemented by 2020. The article is an attempt to analyse the research programme formulated in the hypothesis: higher education institutions in Poland have a high potential for implementing smart specialisations. The following detailed questions are formulated on the basis of the main problem: To what extent are regions in Poland developing towards smart specialisations? What is the potential of higher education institutions for implementing smart specialisations? What are the challenges faced by higher education institutions in the context of developing smart specialisations? The objective of the article is to provide an analysis of selected major higher education institutions in Poland and to evaluate them their research and educational potential for implementing smart specialisations. The objective was achieved through the analysis of: strategic documents of the region; strategies of selected higher education institutions in Poland educational package of selected higher education institutions research package (the available research projects and experts) of selected higher education institutions. Secondary analyses were supplemented with interviews with representatives of higher education institutions.