Doing business and outsourcing to Poland was the main topic of the Poland: The Ideal Business Partner meeting and panel discussion at the Hoover Institute on the Stanford University campus last Thursday evening.

One of the keynote speakers was Marek Michalik, Vice Mayor of the City of Łódź. BTW, that first letter of the city name is an “L” with a slash. It’s a separate letter in the Polish alphabet, sometimes called the Dark-L. It is pronounced like a “W” in English and thus the city name is actually pronounced as “wooch”.

In reference to his mainly English-speaking audience, Mr. Michalik introduced himself as “the vice-mayor of the city spelled L-O-D-Z”, which got a good laugh since many of us learned the pronunciation for the first time that evening.

Mr. Michalik and the other keynote speakers clearly expressed a desire for big companies to open technology development centers and create jobs in Poland. Indeed the call is being answered by several large companies including IBM, Intel, Google, Motorola and Siemens. Even the Indian firm Tata Consultancy has a 1,500 person outsourcing center in Krakow.

It was described this way: “If you plan to create 5 jobs in Poland then please call. If your plan will create 50 jobs then we will change our schedule to meet with you. If you plan to create 500 jobs or more, then call anytime, day or night, on my cell phone.

” Why?

Poland is graduating about 40,000 workers per year in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) which is about the same number as Russia.

The keynote speakers from Poland spoke excellent English, demonstrating one of the reasons to do business in Poland – the widespread use of English in addition to the close cultural affinity with America. It is easy to work with Polish engineers.

In fact it is my opinion that the low-cost only reason to outsource or create operations offshore is beginning to weaken as costs in India start to rise. Many companies are now looking for quality and a lower total cost if possible. That’s not to say you cannot save money in India, or in other up and coming parts of the world. But if quality and easy communication are important to you then Poland is positioned to compete very well in the global market for software development talent.

In addition, the government of Poland offers several incentives for foreign investment for those of you interested in creating your own offshore development center. A good place to start looking for information on these government incentives is the Polish Information and Foreign Investment Agency website: http://www.paiz.gov.pl

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Steve Mezak will be speaking at the conference “Poland: The Ideal Business Partner” on November 8, 2007. The conference will be held from 5:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. at the Stauffer Auditorium at Hoover Institution, 434 Galvez Mall, Stanford, CA 94305. For more information, go to http://www.polishconsul.com/, email events@polishconsul.com, or call Szymon Ociepka at 415-777-4445 or George Slawek at 415-357-1225.

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