Nearshoring in Poland.
Marcel Hirsiger. Lecturer at FHNW School of Business, Olten. Expert in Central and Eastern European business administration.
The opening episode answers the question every European board has now asked twice: why is Poland the conversation, and what is the actual trade. Marcel Hirsiger has spent a career teaching that question to Swiss business students, which makes him the right person to ask. We work through the obvious answer first (cost, proximity, an EU regulatory floor, a deep technical labour pool) and then keep going, because the obvious answer is the one every consultancy already published. The interesting part is what the obvious answer leaves out.
Three threads carried the conversation. First, Poland's tech ecosystem did not appear by accident; it was built on twenty years of West European outsourcing that quietly trained an entire generation of senior engineers. Second, the cultural translation is the bottleneck. Swiss and German buyers underwrite Polish suppliers like they are pricing risk, when they should be pricing capacity. Third, the human side is the deal. Successful nearshoring relationships look more like long-term partnerships than vendor contracts, and the operators who treat them that way win the second deal.
A field-guide episode rather than a thesis episode. If you are a founder or a CFO thinking about Central Europe, this is the briefing.