Innovation in Exile: Poland Cultivates Talents for the World

A Debate That Missed the Core of the Problem

Many of you have probably already seen the material available for a few days on YouTube, where Maciej Kawecki on his channel This is IT discusses Poland’s future in the face of revolution. We’re talking about innovation, new technologies, and the AI revolution. The conversation took place at Jagiellonian University, and the invited guests were Wojciech Zaremba (OpenAI, co-creator of ChatGPT), Andrzej Dragan (professor of theoretical physics), Rafał Modrzewski (ICEYE - imaging satellites), Marcin Markiewicz (Silent Eight - artificial intelligence for financial anomaly detection), and Piotr Dąbkowski (ElevenLabs - AI speech synthesis technology). Together they ponder why there’s no innovation in Poland and why people with potential and ideas must realize them abroad. Frankly speaking, one of the more interesting debates lately, because such a sad narrative struggles to break through in the mainstream.

Marcin Dąbkowski: China and the United States are in some kind of AI war, there’s some arms race (…) I don’t know if we pay the same attention to this, or at least even a fraction of such attention, and we certainly don’t pay as much as we should.

I’ll admit that while I’m not surprised by the lineup of people with a reputation for successfully commercializing their ideas, I don’t quite understand what status Andrzej Dragan had in the conversation. Why invite a theoretical physicist who popularizes AI on social media to a discussion about Polish startup problems, financing, and the innovation industry? I understand he’s a person who often appears publicly, but realistically without business experience, and that’s what we’re talking about here.

Even at the most elementary level, when Dragan was asked about an academic career in Poland and the possibility of development and science funding, he replied that in his opinion, success is possible without problems, even in poverty, because it depends on the scientist. He even tried to argue that a sheet of paper and a pencil are enough. Bizarre. As he stated, he himself didn’t go to Oxford, where he was offered a job. When asked about the financial problems of Polish science, Dragan evaded by saying he couldn’t comment on whether it’s underfunded because he doesn’t know about it. Strange selective perception.

In Poland, a country of permanent science underfunding, conducting pseudo-projects to extract money, corruption and cronyism, Andrzej Dragan, who has an opinion on every topic, elegantly avoids this one. Doesn’t he see the problem of obtaining positions based on inflated publication scores, which is pointed to as one of the sources of stagnation in Polish science?

But let’s return to the innovation problem.

Superficial Diagnosis vs. Systemic Disease

During the debate, the other panelists correctly pointed to problems such as difficulties in raising capital, differences in mentality and risk appetite between Poland and Silicon Valley, or the lack of an ecosystem supporting global expansion. Wojciech Zaremba and Piotr Dąbkowski emphasized how crucial speed of action and access to the largest, American market are for scaling revolutionary technologies. All of this is true.

In my opinion, however, despite the accuracy of many diagnoses, this discussion largely bypassed the fundamental, systemic barriers that make the Polish ecosystem so toxic for true, breakthrough innovation. The problem isn’t just the flow of money or the speed of receiving it. The problem is the entire business environment – shifting sands of law, judicial paralysis, and a deeply rooted culture that punishes risk and rewards connections. And, last but not least, horrifically expensive electricity.

Navigating the Labyrinth: The Real Causes of Innovation Lack

I’d like to present my perspective to you. I want to unmask the real, objective factors that create a climate hostile to development in Poland. So hostile that every person with a million-dollar idea sits on suitcases with a US visa the next day.

The Paradox of Polish Business Climate: Two Narratives

If we look at the rapid GDP development over the last 30 years and the Polish business environment, we reveal a deep paradox. On one hand, macroeconomic data paints a picture of a dynamically developing economy. Politicians present charts with smiles that they don’t fully understand. On the other hand, international rankings and entrepreneurs’ opinions point to an environment burdened with high risk, unpredictability, and significant administrative barriers. These are the facts.

In the Global Business Complexity Index (GBCI) report, Poland has for years occupied inglorious, leading positions. In 2023, Poland was the fourth most difficult country in Europe and twelfth in the world to do business in, and in 2024 the seventh in Europe and twelfth in the world.

Report authors cite legislative chaos, frequent and violent changes in law, and lack of transparency as main causes. This is confirmed by the Global Innovation Index (GII) ranking, where in the “Political stability for business” category, Poland occupies a distant 123rd place.

The key conclusion is as follows: Poland is a country that is procedurally efficient for simple tasks, but systemically complex and unpredictable in the broader context. Setting up a company can be quick, but running it, especially in the face of constant legal changes, becomes a huge challenge.

Shifting Sands of Polish Law: Instability as Fundamental Risk

One of the most frequently raised barriers is the unstable and complicated legal environment. This is a fundamental strategic risk that paralyzes long-term planning and hampers investments.

In 2024, 133,420 new legal acts were published, which translated to 14.2 thousand pages of new law. In 2023 alone, 553 new regulations for companies came into effect, and 1,051 were changed.

Entrepreneurs’ opinions clearly confirm this. The percentage of companies indicating legal instability as a significant obstacle increased from 36% in 2019 to 51% in 2023. This constant variability has a direct impact on risk aversion and, as the ZPP report indicates, leads to “fear of capital loss.”

Justice Deferred: The Paralyzing Effect of Judicial Inefficiency

An efficient judicial system is the backbone of a market economy. That’s the theory. Unfortunately, the Polish justice system has been struggling with systemic inefficiency for years.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, the average time needed to enforce a commercial contract in Poland is 685 days. The cost of such proceedings averages 19.4% of the claim value.

The problem is so deep that it has been recognized as “systemic” by the European Court of Human Rights. In a study by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, as many as 95.8% of lawyers recognized that the problem of procedural delays has a systemic character. For a startup whose survival depends on financial liquidity, almost two years of waiting for a verdict is often a death sentence.

The Shadow of the State: Perception of Corruption and Cronyism

Key to understanding the Polish business climate is the problem of corruption and political influence.

The most telling indicator is Poland’s position in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Since 2015, Poland has been noting a steady decline. The result dropped from 63 points in 2015 to just 53 points in 2024.

The problem has taken the form of so-called “grand corruption,” including monopolization of power, discretionary decisions, lack of transparency, and clientelism and nepotism in the distribution of public goods. The real threat to innovative companies is not the necessity of bribing, but the risk that a competitor with political connections will receive a huge state grant on non-competitive terms or that a public tender will be written for a specific bidder.

Anatomy of Collapse: Idea Bank Case Study

However we may evaluate the banking sphere, the GetBack and Idea Bank affair constitutes a powerful case study illustrating the destructive conflict between the state and the private sector. Regardless of final legal decisions, the sequence of events – the alleged corruption proposal from the KNF chief, subsequent regulatory pressure, and the ultimate takeover of the bank by a state entity – sent a blood-chilling signal to the market: conflict with the state can have existential consequences.

Voice from the Front Line: The Story of a Simulator That Had to Flee

If the story of a financial giant seems distant, let’s look at a tangible example that brings these systemic pathologies down to the level of one specific innovator. A perfect case study is the story of Tomasz Wojciechowski, an engineer and creator of an advanced combat helicopter simulator (1:1 scale) for the military, which he told about in a TOK FM Radio podcast. This man built over the last 5 years fully functional equipment that simulates helicopter and airplane flights. We’re talking here not about a toy but about professional equipment on which pilots can train.

Mr. Tomasz, with patriotic motives, decided to create a device that would really improve the effectiveness of Polish soldiers. For years, with his own money, he developed breakthrough technology. When he tried to obtain financing, he hit a wall.

In 2018, when I submitted an application to NCBiR, I was told that the project is too innovative and they’re afraid to get involved.

This sentence is the quintessence of Polishness and the systemic failure of this country’s innovation. An institution created to support innovation is afraid of… innovation. Apparently, innovations are supported there mainly through arrangements. How many IT projects I’ve seen written to extract subsidies. But NCBiR in Mr. Tomasz’s case was just the beginning. Poland humiliated him several times. When finally, after years of work and finding a private investor, the product was ready, it turned out that the Polish market was closed to him.

Host: And who is your client? The Polish Army?
Guest: Well, we’re currently targeting the American market. (Dadalo editorial note: when the Polish army saw the simulator presentation at the fair, they couldn’t believe it was real, working equipment. The competition creating toys for the army was terrified.) Host: Why?
Guest: Because in Poland it’s very difficult to do business with the military. It’s very complicated. (…) In Poland there are many companies that live off the military. And they have a very strong position. And they don’t allow anyone new to enter this market.

And this telling quote, exposing the essence of the problem:

Guest: In the United States, there’s a completely different culture. There, if someone has a good product, they simply enter the market and sell it. But in Poland, even if you have a good product, you still need to have connections.

This is exactly that grand corruption and state capture in practice. Better technology that could serve the country’s security doesn’t matter. What matters are arrangements and protecting the interests of established companies. Mr. Tomasz’s story is a perfect summary of the tragedy of Polish innovation: a brilliant engineer with patriotic motivation is forced to commercialize his strategic product abroad because his own country creates insurmountable barriers for him.

His case is not an exception. It’s brutal confirmation of the rule.

However, if someone still claimed that you can make a big deal in Poland, I hasten to add that even if an innovator somehow miraculously avoids these traps, they’ll hit the hard ceiling of costs. We have the most expensive electricity in the region, and new technologies don’t like startup costs, which I wrote about many months ago.

So let’s return to the panelists from the This is IT channel. Their theses that everything depends on the implementation strength of developers, and even Zaremba’s words that a difficult environment favors optimization, sound naive in this context. Yes, difficult conditions can toughen, but you can’t “optimize” electricity prices or jump over an arrangement that blocks market access.

Poland is and will remain at the tail end of innovation for now. Not for lack of talent, but due to a specific, toxic culture of corruption, cronyism, and active undermining of ambitious people who are perceived as a threat to mediocrities and system beneficiaries.