Support for Entrepreneurship in Restructuring Shipbuilding Industry – the Example of Baltic Port of New Technologies

Abstract

Restructuring of enterprises is a natural phenomenon in a capitalist economy. In a transformingPolish economy, it was a very deep, cumulated, turbulent and socially costly process. One of the industriesin which it lasted for the longest and brought very varied results was the shipbuilding industry. The articleaims primarily at presenting the restructuring process of this industry on the example of Gdynia, with particularemphasis on activities supporting public entities entrepreneurship. Inductive approach was used inthe research. The authors have analysed case studies, planning documents, activity reports, an informationcontained on the websites of the institutions. The results indicate that the condition for the success of a difficultrestructuring process, a stage of which was the closing down of a large shipyard and then the developmentof the smaller but varied businesses was a joint involvement of private and public capital. Publicentities took part in the process by improving infrastructure and creating, among others, the Baltic Port ofNew Technologies. Within the project, research facilities and offices for maritime industry based companiesof all sizes were supplied. Thanks to it better conditions for the implementation of new technologies in theshipbuilding industry were created, at the same time other sectors were provided with a stimulus to use innovations.Therefore, Porter agglomeration economies have been strengthened. The results are the starting point for discussion on factors affecting the resilience of the local economy against crisis and the role of thepublic sector in improving this feature.