Entrepreneurship in Poland: Dynamics and Cross-Country Comparison

Entrepreneurship was one of the areas of social life that underwent the most dramatic change during the period of political and economic transition in Poland. Some early changes were introduced to the law and regulations concerning private ownership of the businesses even in the mid-1980s, but the real burst of entrepreneurial activity took place in the early 1990s. During last two decades business venturing in Poland had its ups and downs, so the question is: where is it now? How does it compare to other countries? What was the dynamics of entrepreneurial activity in the last couple of years? And what are the conditions for entrepreneurship in Poland? To answer those questions I am going to use various secondary statistical data. The most reliable data comes from the government statistical office, however, it shows only the basic information like the number of start-ups, number of discontinued businesses, industry and the place of start-up. What I am interested in is an in-depth view into attitudes and aspirations of entrepreneurs and not just the raw number of start-ups. The purpose of this chapter is to show the landscape of entrepreneurship in Poland. I argue that to fully achieve that the best way is to use the data that comes from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). It captures the additional information on the motivation for start-up, age, gender, level of education and other statistics of the entrepreneur.