The Energy Law of April 10, 1997 initiated changes in the energy market in Poland. Actions taken on the basis of this law were aimed at the modernization and development of the power sector. Organizational and legal changes causing the development of distributed generation, thus increasing the level of market competition have been introduced. The care for high quality of customer service, including the protection of vulnerable customers, environmental protection, growing share of renewable energy and emission reduction requirements have become a reality. It seems, therefore, that it is necessary for the Polish energy sector to undergo permanent modernization, to develop the production and industrial infrastructure and to develop modern conventional technologies by way of implementing innovations in the field of energy companies. The author of the paper argues that it is indispensable to make a broadly understood transfer of knowledge and technology to the energy sector on the basis of a knowledge-based economy. This also applies to energy clusters, which currently constitute a platform for cooperation: entrepreneurs, scientific-research units, and public authorities. The functioning of these entities is an important catalyst for the transfer of knowledge and technologies. Their regional nature boosts competitiveness of the involved enterprises, and is a natural way of transferring knowledge to the energy market.

Knowledge management is a process aimed at enriching and effectively using knowledge assets in various areas of business operations. It also applies to manufacturing enterprises that offer tangible products combining it with the art of processing information and intellectual assets into added value for the customer. A characteristic feature of manufacturing enterprises is assigning their employees a double role: a knowledge user and, at the same time, an internal source of specialist knowledge. In the situation of dynamically changing market conditions, there is an additional need to acquire new knowledge (in practice: often to buy knowledge) from the company’s environment. A solution in the above-mentioned scope in Poland may be digital repositories of science assets as tools for knowledge transfer to SMEs. Research institutes are an important element in the process of knowledge transfer from scientific units to the economy (e.g. they offer their services in open access). The paper presents the concept of such a repository preceded by a diagnosis of the existing state, an analysis of the recipients of the deposited content and the examination and analysis of the requirements of potential users of the repository.

The establishment of the Research Network Lukasiewicz (RNL) is aimed at strengthening the research potential and knowledge transfer from research institutes to enterprises. The article presents the results of the research potential analysis of 38 research institutes that are to form the RNL, based on data on scientific publications in 2013–2016. The number of publications of RNL institutes was similar to the number of publications of TNO and VTT institutes but smaller than that of Fraunhofer institutes. The publications of RNL institutes had lower values of indicators of international collaboration and collaboration with business as well as lower values of citation indices. Co-authors of RNL publications were mainly affiliated with national scientific units, whereas co-authorship with Fraunhofer, TNO and VTT institutes was marginal. The article also outlines the limitations and challenges of the adopted research method and future research orientations in this area.

This article deals with the issue of home-country receptivity towards social remittances from the pro-fessional diaspora. Social remittances from the highly skilled depend on a favourable context for knowledge and skills transfer in their home countries, a context that could be summarised by the term ‘country receptivity’. This article is based on the case of Lithuania. The data comes from a series of semi-structured interviews with members of the skilled diaspora and representatives of institutions that are involved in programmes targeted at the diaspora. The analysis reveals several groups of obstacles to successful knowledge and skills transfer that may be understood as issues of country receptivity: mistrust of government by diaspora members, expressed as a belief that it is not interested in results and thus involvement of the diaspora, but rather in pursuing particular political objectives; lack of openness towards other experiences (unwillingness of institutions at different levels and in various fields to open up to new opinions, approaches and experiences brought by Lithuanians from abroad); bureaucratic and institutional impediments (inability of institutions to adapt their procedures in the interests of co-operation; slowness and ineffectiveness when dealing with requests or reacting to initiatives from the diaspora); and a perceived negative opinion (unwelcoming attitude) in society towards Lithuanians from abroad. The interviews also provide some tentative evidence of a ‘feedback loop’, through which the involvement of the diaspora causes changes in the home-country institutions. In the discussion part of the article, possible causes and implications of these obstacles are considered.