Regional Specialisation as an Endogenous Factor in the Development of Poland's Provinces

The economic development of Poland and its regions results from a complex interaction of many factors, which include regional innovation policy. The task of regional innovation policy is to identify and develop smart specialisations, which may offer an opportunity of building up sustained competitive advantage of Poland's provinces. The identification of regional specialisations for the needs of regional policy carried out by Poland's provinces is a complex process. It must be placed within the context of all other processes of territorial development. To formulate specialisations, it is necessary to perform a thorough analysis of regional economic structures, taking into account both the resources of a given region and possibilities of generating revenue. One of the methods used to identify potential regional specialisations is the Krugman dissimilarity index. In the paper, it is employed to analyse the dissimilarities between the economic structures of Poland's regions.