The book on Polish innovativeness presented an extraordinarily harsh criticism of the traditional science and higher education systems in Poland in the first years of the country’s membership in the European Union. Klincewicz used the metaphor of bottomless pit to describe the post-socialist, ineffective system of innovations, which requires major structural reforms before the public R&D expenditure is increased. Some of the outlined problems included:

• unbalanced focus on basic not applied research among Polish technical science researchers
• excessive public interest in attracting foreign investors to offer low-cost workplaces, not higher value added R&D efforts
• lack of good practices among stock exchange-listed companies, disregarding the importance of innovations, growth and R&D, and focusing on operational efficiencies and cost cutting measures instead,
• failed policies in selected areas such as biotechnology, where the government incurred substantial investments in educating biotechnology graduates, but did not sufficiently support the development of local companies, thus supporting – the brain drain by Western European biotech industry, or unsatisfactory developments of Polish computer sciences research, with highly cited scientific publications not yielding practical research results, transferrable to the private sector.

The book was published in 2008, two years before the comprehensive reform of science and higher education in Poland, which alleviated many of the problems, diagnosed by the empirical research.