In the United States, an entrepreneur whose business falls into a deep crisis reaches for the Chapter 11 procedure (restructuring under court supervision), draws hard lessons from the market lesson and plans the next step without losing his image. Among American Venture Capital investors, a former bankrupt with conclusions is even seen as a seasoned leader. Meanwhile, in the Polish reality, the president of a company with problems is able to drive 300 kilometres to a meeting with a restructuring advisor only for no one in his home town to notice his car in front of a bankruptcy office.
This brief anecdote brutally exposes the cultural divide. Overseas, failure is a natural part of the innovation process and a full-fledged item on the business CV. In Poland and the wider Central and Eastern European (CEE) region, a market stumble is still a source of shame, a reason for social ostracism and often a social judgment that radiates out to the founder’s entire environment.
Anatomy of a national fear
Why are we so afraid of being wrong? The answer is provided by economic sociology. According to Geert Hofstede’s well-known typology of cultural dimensions, Polish society is characterised by one of the highest indices of “uncertainty avoidance” in the world, scoring as many as 93 points out of a possible 100 in this category. This implies a deep need for security and a panicky aversion to risky, unpredictable life and work scenarios.
The scale of the phenomenon is confirmed by the latest hard data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report for 2024/2025, which shows that as many as 52% of adult Poles are deterred from starting their own business by sheer fear of failure. This result ranks Poland 11th out of 51 countries surveyed worldwide and is noticeably higher than the European average (47%).
The paradox of this situation is that although as many as 83% of Poles objectively consider setting up a business to be a relatively simple process, only 3% of them realistically plan to take this risk in the next three years, the lowest of all the countries surveyed. The social stigmatisation of a possible bankrupt – often treated as an incompetent person or even suspected of deliberate fraud – creates an effective psychological barrier.
Bankruptcy – the legal and institutional corset of boards of directors
The decision-making paralysis of Polish managers is not only due to a cultural mentality, but is compounded by legislative considerations. The spectre of Article 296 of the Penal Code, which severely penalises the infliction of significant property damage on a company (the so-called crime of mismanagement), constantly hangs over the heads of board members in Poland.
The situation is complicated by the amendment at the end of 2023, which significantly widened the circle of entities entitled to initiate prosecution under this paragraph – now a shareholder or partner, among others, can file a motion. As a result, managers, fearing years of reputation-damaging criminal prosecutions, prefer safe conservatism to proactive investment in high-risk R&D innovations. Out of fear of consequences, organisations create a culture of hiding stumbles (‘dead bodies in the wardrobe’), which in the long term inevitably leads to a build-up of mistakes and ultimate crashes that could have been avoided with open communication.
Titans who have bounced back from the bottom
That market death can be a myth is most clearly evidenced by the stories of leading Polish entrepreneurs who have gone through absolute debt hell and are now building global powers.
Before creating the Booksy app – a digital hit already used by nearly 38 million users worldwide – Stefan Batory scored a painful collision with business reality. His first company, eo Networks, got into huge financial trouble, generating £200,000 in debt amid a tightening liquidity loop. The distraught entrepreneur then heard some unusual advice from an experienced friend. With his absolute last money, he bought a decent suit so that he could represent the brand in a dignified and professional manner during sales meetings. This desperate belief in the process and going out to the customer allowed him to save the company to become the investment visionary behind iTaxi and Booksy in the future.
Another example of an almost textbook escape from under the knife is the story of Rafal Brzoska. Today a billionaire and logistics hegemon, he teetered on the brink of catastrophic bankruptcy in 2016-2017. An extremely capital-intensive attempt at global expansion brought his Integer group (owner of Paczkomaty) to the wall of repaying its gigantic bond obligations.
In the Polish business and stock market environment, the founder began to be treated as a pariah overnight. However, Brzoska made a bravura and rare rescue move in our market – he formed an alliance with the global fund Advent International, which allowed the companies to be taken off the Warsaw trading floor. Escaping from the pillory of quarterly stock market expectations allowed for a thorough restructuring. The result? In 2021, InPost returned to the stock market, this time in Amsterdam, and in 2024, the entry of the powerful FedEx into InPost’s shareholding was announced, valuing the business at more than €7.8 billion.
Towards a culture of “intelligent failure”
In order to break the current paradigm, a change in approach to management education is required. With help here comes the global concept of so-called ‘intelligent failure’, promoted by Harvard Business School management researcher Amy C. Edmondson. In her book (‘Good Failures’), she argues that in order to be successful, it is necessary to separate ordinary operational errors from deliberate risk-taking. If the failure meets the criteria for novelty (e.g. we enter a new market where there are no precedents), and the implementation process was deliberate – then such failure is a key, natural hypothesis validation mechanism necessary for innovation. A prerequisite for its occurrence, however, is for managers to provide a sense of psychological security for the workforce.
On Polish soil, this transformation is being painstakingly built by grassroots organisations. Jarek Łojewski, founder of the Good Failure Foundation, has been convincing the market to be open for years, pulling the nimbus of shame from failure. He promotes, among other things, the organisation of FuckUp Nights, where acclaimed CEOs stand on stage and publicly share their biggest mistakes – from bad choice of partners to misguided investments. This kind of business stand-up perfectly balances the iced-out LinkedIn message of a streak of endless success.
The evolution of restructuring law is also becoming helpful. The EU directive being implemented in Poland has been given the telling name of the ‘Second Chance Directive’. The introduction of modern settlement tools (e.g. Arrangement Approval Proceedings) is expected to ensure that companies with temporary problems are rescued and the market learns that reaching an agreement with creditors is a sign of a debtor’s maturity and not a reason for the disappearance of the CEO and bankruptcy of all assets.
The Polish economy has an excellent technological base and great determination to work, but in order to compete on a permanent basis with the most innovative Western markets, it needs to revise its attitude to the phenomenon of failure. Innovation, by its definition, requires risk, and risk presupposes the possibility of error. Finally, we must separate the personal dignity of the individual from the market outcome of the legal entity he or she has founded. The sooner we understand that the constructive failure of an honest entrepreneur is not a reason for social infamy, but a priceless point on a CV, the more “Polish unicorns” will fight for primacy on global markets without hesitation.
