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Time to cooperate Polish firms must capitalise on their employees’ social capital if they are to build global brands
Poland Today sits down with Witold Orłowski, professor of economics, member of the prime minister’s Economic Council, and chief economic advisor at consultancy PwC.
PwC is content partner of Poland Today’s Poland Transformed Conference,
taking place on May 28, 2014 at Endorfina Foksal in Warsaw
What stage of life were you at in 1989? What are your memories of that time?
At that time I was planning to prepare my PhD; I didn’t have any position in At that time I was in the United Polish academia. States. I was a post-graduate student A little over a year later in 1991, at Harvard on a Fulbright scholarship. when Poland was negotiating potenI voted at the embassy. I was very tial associate membership of the EU, interested and excited about what was Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, who at the time happening in Poland. There was a new was the plenipotentiary for European hope. What happened helped me to integration, asked me to prepare some decide to return to Poland, and I found simulations of the EU association it very exciting to come back to my impact for Poland’s economy. The EU home country a couple of months later. had produced some dire models for Poland, and they needed some counWhat was it like watching what ter-models to show them. He asked me was happening from the US? if I could prepare them in one week. It was nice because it was one of the I said that I would, and I managed rare moments when Poland was often to do it. Following that I was made on the front page of major US newspa- responsible for the economic matters pers. I could pick up the Boston Globe regarding negotiations for European or the New York Times and there it Union membership. was. People there were always askSo I was involved in the transformaing me what was happening in Poland. tion process from the early 1990s. Once Of course this was before the time of I started, I spent the remaining 22 years the internet, so I had to call home to find being involved in what was happening out myself! But I was proud and happy in the Polish economy. to see the changes happening, and I was proud that people were asking me What do you think has been questions. I remember the day of the the key to Poland’s success elections in Poland. My family called me over the past 25 years? when the first results were announced. It was Poland’s explosion of entreI immediately told my colleagues at preneurship first of all – not the forthe graduate student dormitory. When eign investment. The Czech Republic I told them that Solidarity had won 99 got many more foreign investors at the seats in the Senate, they looked at me beginning, but it has been growing at with some disbelief, because in truly a much slower pace than Poland. Here, free democracies no party ever does there were decisive moves towards libquite that well. I got the sense that they eralisation of the economy, and that thought maybe Poland at the time was allowed all of the ‘virtual’ businesses just exchanging one false democracy that had sprung up to become legal for another. But of course that wasn’t almost overnight and flourish. At first the case. this all made Poland look like it was far behind, because Prague and Budapest You were a student of economlooked like beautiful commercial cenics – what was your view of Poland’s tres and in Warsaw there were people trading on the street. But everyone miseconomic situation at the time? I knew that Poland was in a dramatic read what that meant. Poland became economic depression. The economy the first post-Soviet bloc country to was dying. Indeed, it had been dying for grow on its own. The others were waita decade at least, but at that time it was ing for foreign investors. really almost dead. It was such a mixed picture. There was all of this political What must Poland do to continue breakthrough on the one hand but on its economic success in the future? the other hand I knew that the ecoThis task is going to be even more nomic situation was dramatically bad. difficult than the transformation we have achieved over the past 25 years. Developed economies do not consider How did you start off your poor countries as rivals. They are concareer in Poland? I made one last trip around the US sidered a countries whose competitive and in August I was back in Poland. advantages can be exploited. But now