Innovativeness is, beside competitiveness, one of the key questions and challenges that stands before modern enterprises in the global economy touched by the current crisis. How forcefully can we plan and accustom innovation? What kind of resources should we develop if we want to be an innovative enterprise? – This is only a snapshot of questions which managers of global corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises must answer. Helpful to this process can be the analysis of innovative potential which forms the background for the considerations included in the present paper.The results of empirical research allow us to formulate the following conclusions about the nature of generalizing: 1. The vast majority of key components of the innovation potential of both SMEs and the leaders of the Polish economy are resources of an intangible nature, 2. Among the analyzed functional areas, the most important resource, in terms of innovation potential, turned out to be – in the SME group – the sphere of employment, whereas in the group of leaders of the Polish economy – the sphere of organization and management, 3. In both groups – SMEs and the leaders of the Polish economy – definitely it should also be emphasized that the key role of knowledge in building innovation capacity is mystery. The symptoms of this fact can be found in most of the identified key ingre-dients of the innovation potential of SMEs and leaders of the Polish economy.

Innovativeness is, beside competitiveness, one of the key questions and challenges that stands before modern enterprises in the global economy touched by the current crisis. How forcefully can we plan and accustom innovation? What kind of resources should we develop if we want to be an innovative enterprise? – This is only a snapshot of questions which managers of global corporations and small and medium-sized enterprises must answer. Helpful to this process can be the analysis of innovative potential which forms the background for the considerations included in the present paper.The results of empirical research allow us to formulate the following conclusions about the nature of generalizing: 1. The vast majority of key components of the innovation potential of both SMEs and the leaders of the Polish economy are resources of an intangible nature, 2. Among the analyzed functional areas, the most important resource, in terms of innovation potential, turned out to be – in the SME group – the sphere of employment, whereas in the group of leaders of the Polish economy – the sphere of organization and management, 3. In both groups – SMEs and the leaders of the Polish economy – definitely it should also be emphasized that the key role of knowledge in building innovation capacity is mystery. The symptoms of this fact can be found in most of the identified key ingre-dients of the innovation potential of SMEs and leaders of the Polish economy.