The main purpose of the paper is the identification of internal and external factors prompting selected Polish R&D departments to be active in innovation, R&D and user-driven innovation. To study the relation between selected determinants, econometric models were applied. The results of the adopted research procedure confirmed that it is important to invest in innovation activity but especially to have at least an R&D strategy in enterprise. The use of user-driven innovation concept is mostly unconsciously but still cooperation with users is an important factor in achieving the high level of innovation. Because of that, according to authors, the more advance research procedure to analyze the further determinants of innovation activity in R&D department in Poland should be applied.