Innovation Management in Polish Real Estate Developers in the Renewable Energy Sources Context

Abstract

This paper analyses innovative activities, including renewable energy sources (RES) in the housing market, the motivations for their introduction, effectiveness, benefits, limitations and management—which are open and current problems of Polish and international sustainable construction. This problem is part of a research gap concerning, among others, the role of developers and entities responsible for introducing energy innovations into housing construction. The aim of the paper is to analyse innovations, with particular emphasis on RES, introduced by residential developers in Poland in the context of global trends. The work is based on the results of surveys conducted among developers of the primary housing market. The research of 130 questionnaires received from entities such as multi-storey buildings and multi-family houses in Poland, was carried out on a nationwide sample using the CATI Computer Assisted Telephone Interview method. The results of the survey research were summarized by setting research hypotheses, which were verified using the significance test based on the Laplace normal distribution. The research conducted has shown that residential developers in Poland point at, among others, competitive pressures, concern about the quality of products and services offered, increasing market share or satisfaction and increasing customer requirements. This clearly shows that the implementation of innovation is perceived through the prism of increasing competitiveness. Furthermore, developers operating in the more competitive markets—nationwide and on the market of the five largest Polish cities, usually larger companies, showed a greater willingness and even the need to introduce innovation in their activities. In the study, developers as one of the barriers of introducing innovations, apart from the lack of adequate support, mainly from public entities in the field of, inter alia, appropriate law favouring the implementation of innovations and financial support, indicate difficulties of the client’s market manifested by the lack of knowledge and identification of needs in the field of innovation, and the lack of willingness to pay a higher price in regard to the product with higher innovation level. In the paper, the authors recommend developers, among others, to implement in the management process the identification of possible to implement innovations and the customers’ needs in innovations with education in the field of possible innovations and its benefits. The article indicates the need to intensify the implementation of innovations in housing projects in order to increase competitiveness and to meet the European Union’s requirement regarding the use of renewable energy sources.