In Poland, the basic document introducing, in a formal way, the concept of innovation into the economic cycle was the Operational Program Innovative Economy 2007-2013 (OP IE) - a government document adopted by the Council of Ministers on 19 December 2006. This document described the state of the Polish economy and the state of Polish science in terms of innovation and competitiveness. As usual in such cases, the administrative structures were initially developed by introducing the concepts such as: Managing Institution, Intermediate Institutions and Implementing Institutions, and a large-scale information campaign was started as if the projects in Poland had not been implemented so far, which had not been completed with implementation in practice of a new or significantly improved product, service or process. The paper will present some projects carried out at the Faculty of Transport of the Warsaw University of Technology before 2007., that is before the OP IE, which projects can be included in the innovative projects according to the adopted definition.