Barriers to the development of creative clusters in Poland

Creativity is one of the factors promoting the development of urban centres. Its significance provokes discussion on issues such as the creative city, creative industries and creative clusters, and it contributes to the increased demand for multidisciplinary research on economic, social and artistic policy. The paper is devoted to creative industries clusters located in Poland. Its main goal is to identify the factors that hinder the operation of the analysed clusters. The observed factors are broken down into endogenous and exogenous ones, as well as into those that emerged during cluster mobilization and others which surfaced later during the clusters’ existence. The survey was conducted among creative cluster coordinators, using computer-assisted web interview (CAWI) and computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI). The results show that most of the problems mentioned by respondents are internal factors, of which the most important one is a misunderstanding of the idea of clustering and the resulting reluctance to share knowledge, as well as the dominance of competition over cooperation, frowned-upon movements of employees between cluster participants, and the consequent diminished trust. External barriers were revealed mainly in further periods of the clusters’ operation. The most important of them was a dependence on external funding. Respondents pointed to a lack of interest on the part of local government units, which makes it difficult to build a properly functioning triple helix. It should also be added that cluster policy in Poland has been moving away from clusters understood in geographical terms where spatial concentration and economic specialization were the key features. Currently, cluster policy is directed more towards managing cluster structures.