Business patriotism does not mean choosing everything simply because it carries a Polish label. It means building knowledge, technology, intellectual property and standards in Poland that are good enough for Europe to choose them. Using the examples of Jan Czochralski, InPost, Solaris and the battery sector, we show why Poland cannot settle for being a factory — it must also become a laboratory.
“Poland cannot be only Europe’s factory. It must become its laboratory”
That sentence may sound like a manifesto, but it concerns very concrete issues: jobs, pay, taxes, intellectual property, technological security and who will capture the greatest value from the next industrial revolution.
This is not an argument against factories, foreign investors or European integration. Manufacturing is necessary: it provides jobs, builds supply chains and develops expertise. The problem begins only when we treat it as the limit of our ambitions. A production hall can be built in a few years. The ability to create technology, patents, software, data and standards independently is built over generations.
That is precisely why we need a mature conversation about business patriotism today — not as an emotional slogan, but as a development strategy.
Business patriotism means taking responsibility for ensuring that knowledge, technology, intellectual property, data, expertise and as much of the value created as possible remain in Poland, while maintaining the quality needed to compete in European and global markets.
The point is not for Europe to buy from us out of politeness. It is for Europe to buy from us because we create solutions without which its future is hard to imagine.
Business patriotism is not a flag on the packaging
The simplest version of economic patriotism says: “buy Polish”. That is an important instinct, but it is not enough. A label alone does not answer the question of where value is actually created.
A product may be assembled in Poland while relying on foreign patents, foreign software, foreign data, foreign financing and decisions made outside our country. The opposite is also possible: a solution created by a Polish team may be manufactured or sold in many markets, while its centre of knowledge, intellectual property and development remains in Poland.
That is why we should ask more than just “where was it made?”.
Where was the technology developed?
Who owns the patent, source code and database?
Who sets the quality criteria and measurement method?
Where is the research and development centre?
Who controls the brand, distribution and customer relationship?
Where does the margin remain, and who makes the strategic decisions?
Modern business patriotism does not mean tolerating poor quality in the name of national solidarity. On the contrary, it sets higher expectations for Polish companies. Polish technology must win through credibility, precision, usefulness and scalability. A flag may inspire pride, but quality builds lasting trust.
Factories and laboratories are not opposites. A mature economy needs both. The difference is that a factory carries out a process, while a laboratory determines which process will be carried out a few years from now.
Increasingly, the greatest share of value is created before production begins and after a product leaves the assembly line. It lies in research, design, intellectual property, software, data, certification, financing, servicing, brands and standards. A country involved mainly in assembly may achieve strong export results while remaining dependent on decisions made elsewhere.
This is not about rejecting foreign capital. A well-designed investment can bring jobs, knowledge, contacts and access to global markets. The real question is whether we can use that time to move up the value chain. Are we creating our own laboratories, technology companies, software, patents, measuring equipment and brands alongside production lines?
We can spend years manufacturing someone else’s future. Or we can learn to design it.
Poland’s potential is real. According to the European Innovation Scoreboard 2026, our innovation performance has risen by 16.3 percentage points since 2019, faster than the European Union average. At the same time, Poland remains among the “Emerging Innovators”, countries scoring below 70% of the EU average. This is an important comparison: we are making progress, but still closing a substantial gap.
*Source: European Commission — European Innovation Scoreboard 2026.
Research and development spending paints a similar picture. Statistics Poland reported that the country spent PLN 51.5 billion on R&D in 2024, with spending intensity reaching 1.41% of GDP, down from 1.56% a year earlier. By comparison, the European Union average in 2024 was 2.24% of GDP.
*Sources: Statistics Poland — research and development activities in Poland in 2024 and Eurostat — R&D expenditure.
There is also very good news. Eurostat reports that between 2014 and 2024, the number of researchers in Poland, measured in full-time equivalents, rose by 82.7%. That is one of the strongest increases in the EU.
*Source: Eurostat — R&D personnel.
We do not lack people capable of creating things. The challenge remains an environment in which their knowledge can become a product, a company, a patent and scale, without having to surrender the most valuable part of a project too early.
Talent is the starting point. Only capital, trust, infrastructure and persistence turn it into an economy.
In 1916, Polish scientist Jan Czochralski developed a method of growing single crystals that became a foundation of semiconductor-material production and modern electronics. He later developed the process at Warsaw University of Technology. IEEE recognised the significance of his work as a milestone in the history of technology.
*Source: IEEE Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Czochralski Process, 1916.
It is a story of which we are rightly proud. But it also warns against equating invention too simply with economic success. A discovery alone does not create an entire value ecosystem. Companies, patents, financing, production infrastructure, supply chains, standards and the ability to scale over the long term are also needed.
This is not about rewriting history or looking for someone to blame. It is about drawing a lesson for the future: Polish technical ingenuity cannot end up as a footnote in a textbook while the greatest economic value is created elsewhere.
An invention becomes part of economic sovereignty only when a country can not only create it, but also develop, finance, protect and bring it to market.
InPost shows the reverse path. Founded in Poland in 1999, the company did not try to copy the traditional delivery model. It addressed a real problem: the parcel should wait for the person, not the person for the courier.
A local observation led to a solution that changed consumer expectations and last-mile logistics. In 2025, the InPost Group delivered 1.3648 billion parcels and operated 62,000 active parcel lockers. It operates in nine European countries.
*Source: InPost — group information and 2025 results.
The numbers themselves, however, are not the most important point. InPost proves that a Polish company can not only participate in the European market, but also change behaviour across an entire category. It did not ask Europe to choose a Polish solution out of goodwill. It built a model that users choose because it is convenient.
This is mature business patriotism: solve a problem better, retain the ability to develop and take Polish expertise beyond the country’s borders.
Solaris began producing buses in Bolechowo in 1996. Three decades later, it is one of Europe’s leading city-bus manufacturers and an important player in zero-emission transport. Its vehicles operate in hundreds of cities, while design and production still take place in Poland.
*Sources: Solaris — company history and Solaris — 30 years of development.
In 2018, the Spanish CAF Group acquired 100% of Solaris. At the time of the transaction, the company employed nearly 2,500 people and operated in more than 30 markets.
*Source: Solaris — announcement of the CAF acquisition.
This is not a story that should be reduced to a simple division between success and failure. A foreign owner can provide capital, scale and new markets, while Polish plants, engineers and the brand can continue to grow. At the same time, the story reminds us that ownership and the location of decision-making matter strategically.
We should celebrate the success of Polish engineering while also asking what can be done to give future companies with similar potential access to Polish capital capable of financing their global growth. Business patriotism is not about closing the door to investors. It is about building our own bargaining power.
The battery sector illustrates the difference between a factory and a laboratory perfectly. According to a report published by the Polish Investment and Trade Agency in 2024, Europe’s largest lithium-ion battery factory is located in Kobierzyce. This is an enormous advantage: manufacturing expertise, jobs, infrastructure and Poland’s inclusion in a strategic electric-mobility supply chain.
*Source: PAIH — The Automotive & Electromobility Sector 2023.
That success must not be downplayed. But we need to ask the next question: how much future value will we retain if we only manufacture batteries using someone else’s technology while importing diagnostic tools, software, valuation models, data, certification and standards?
A traction battery is not merely a physical pack of cells. It is also a system of data, software and economic decisions. Its condition determines safety, vehicle usefulness, operating costs, financing amounts, insurance premiums, residual value, repairability and the potential for a second life in energy storage.
If we manufacture batteries but cannot measure and value them independently, we are strong in production but weaker in defining value. And it is the definition of value that determines who earns money from the used market, financing, insurance, servicing and reuse.
Recently, the owner of a 2012 hybrid contacted us. He had bought the car a year earlier. With a market value of around PLN 20,000–25,000, the car was used mainly for commuting. When a traction-battery problem immobilised it, the owner was under time pressure. He needed to regain mobility quickly, so he commissioned a refurbishment from a company specialising in such repairs.
The work was completed in June. Afterwards, the car made one longer journey — to Hungary and back — and was used for just over a month. In August, it went into limp mode again, this time in the city. It had to be towed. The car was immobilised once more, and the owner faced the question of whether another repair would exceed the economic sense of owning the vehicle.
We do not give a definitive diagnosis without a full examination. Possible causes may include excessive differences in parameters between replaced and retained modules, problems with busbar connections or another system fault. At this stage, these are hypotheses, not a verdict.
The most important issue, however, is systemic. The owner had not received information allowing him to assess independently the battery’s condition before repair, which components were replaced, how the modules were matched, what results were obtained after refurbishment and whether their compatibility suggested lasting performance. He had no common, independent language for comparing “before” and “after”.
We do not tell this story to accuse an unnamed workshop. We share it because it clearly reveals the cost of a market without transparent information. Without reliable measurement, the customer buys a promise. Without a comparable certificate, good and bad services look almost the same before purchase. Without a battery history, responsibility becomes blurred between seller, workshop, user and manufacturer.
This is a practical version of the “market for lemons” described by economist George Akerlof: information asymmetry means uncertainty reduces trust and value across an entire category. We explain this mechanism in more detail in the article “The market for lemons syndrome: why are used EVs losing value artificially?”.
And this is where business patriotism stops being a slogan. It becomes a task: to build a reliable measurement system in Poland that protects consumers, rewards diligent businesses and helps develop a healthy electric-mobility market.
Every developed market rests on an invisible layer of trust. The metre, kilogram, safety standard, credit rating, financial audit or quality certificate is not the product itself, yet large-scale exchange would be difficult without them.
Measurement is not a neutral addition to the economy. It determines what the market regards as good, comparable, safe and valuable.
Those who create the measure do more than describe the market. They help shape its rules.
In electric mobility, the traction battery is one such area. A car may look excellent, have attractive mileage and a full service history, yet remain a financial unknown without reliable battery data. A single percentage claim is not always enough to describe voltage spread, resistance, thermal stability, behaviour under load, incident history or expected residual value.
We can call this the economy’s epistemic sovereignty: the ability to understand, measure and value a strategic technology independently. A country or market without its own measurement expertise depends not only on the imported product, but also on its supplier’s interpretation.
This is a philosophical but highly practical problem. People can make sound decisions only when they have access to reliable knowledge. Markets operate fairly only when the parties are not left to guess. And an economic community retains agency only when it can create its own ways of describing reality.
Poland’s technological ambition should not be anti-European. On the contrary, the most valuable contribution to Europe is to bring our own expertise, technology and responsibility to it.
We do not need a separate “Polish standard” that nobody else wants to use. We need solutions developed in Poland that are so reliable, transparent and useful that they can help shape a European standard.
A strong Europe is not made up of countries that abandon ambition, but of partners with something valuable to offer. The single market gives Polish technology a chance to scale, rather than a reason to retreat behind national borders. Foreign capital can be a partner. Imported technology can accelerate development. Maturity, however, requires us to build the ability to learn, create and make decisions at the same time.
This is not about economic isolation. It is about agency within cooperation.
The EU Battery Regulation changes how Europe will think about the entire battery life cycle. From 18 February 2027, electric-vehicle batteries covered by the regulation will have a digital passport accessible through a QR code. It is intended to support information transparency, traceability, the circular economy and responsible battery management.
*Sources: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 of the European Parliament and of the Council — EUR-Lex and European Commission — Batteries.
The regulatory passport and independent diagnostics are not the same thing. The existence of digital documentation alone does not necessarily answer every question about a specific battery’s current technical condition, failure risk or market value. It does, however, create shared information infrastructure and confirm the direction of change: the battery should stop being a “black box”.
This is a moment when Polish companies can enter the market as co-creators of solutions rather than late adopters of ready-made tools. We will need systems for collecting and organising data, independent diagnostic methods, residual-value models, tools for fleets, leasing and insurance, processes for determining suitability for repair and second-life use, and communication standards between market participants.
If we only start building these capabilities once everything has been defined by others, all that will remain is to buy a licence. If we start today, we can influence the language Europe uses to describe tomorrow’s batteries.
At Voltified Energy, we are developing technology intended to turn uncertainty about traction batteries into comparable technical and economic information.
We are building a system for independent diagnostics and certification of batteries in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. We are developing BHV — Battery Health Value, an approach combining data on a battery’s technical condition with assessment of its residual value. We are also creating Voltified Fleet Intelligence, a platform for fleets, dealers, leasing companies, insurers, valuers and other organisations making decisions based on the condition of EV assets.
Our goal is not to create another impressive-looking indicator. We want to build a layer of trust between the user, seller, workshop, finance provider, insurer and future vehicle buyer. The battery should have a clear history, and its value cannot depend solely on claims made by one party to the transaction.
This is what we mean by a Polish contribution to Europe’s transition: developing expertise in Poland that addresses a real international problem, rather than copying a ready-made solution.
More about our solutions:
What does mature business patriotism look like in practice?
Economic patriotism begins with statements of intent, but is tested in everyday decisions. It looks different from the perspectives of entrepreneurs, investors, universities, government and customers, yet each group influences where value is created and retained.
A Polish company should not expect to be chosen solely because of its origin. It should earn that choice through quality. Building a product that needs no excuses — one capable of winning even when the customer does not know its country of origin — is patriotic.
Code, algorithms, patents, trademarks, databases and methodology are not formal add-ons. They are often the most valuable part of a business. Contracts, legal structure and financing should protect them before the company comes under pressure to grow.
A technology project does not always deliver an immediate return. It needs testing, research, certification and time to earn trust. If Polish capital finances only ventures with fast, predictable returns, the most ambitious technologies will look for owners elsewhere.
The best innovation ecosystems do not rely on unconditional grants. They create a market for good solutions. A pilot order, access to data, a joint research project or fair tender criteria may matter more to a young company than another competition award.
Scientific publications have enormous value, but the economy also needs spin-offs, patents, licences, prototypes and teams able to move from laboratory to customer. Science and business should not meet by chance: they need lasting mechanisms for cooperation.
Polish technology reaches its full potential when it solves customers’ problems in Berlin, Paris, Prague, Tallinn or Madrid as effectively as in Warsaw and Kielce. Exports do not weaken business patriotism. They test it.
When choosing a solution, it is worth asking more than the price. Where was the technology developed? Who is responsible for its development? Do users retain control over their data? Does the company invest in research? Does it build expertise in Poland? Every invoice is a small vote for a particular economic model.
Patriotism is easiest to profess when it costs nothing. It is harder to practise when deciding to spend part of a profit on research, hire engineers before revenue arrives, protect patents, patiently build a brand or choose a Polish partner that meets high standards but does not yet have a global corporation’s scale.
Not every company has to be a technology business. Not every technology has to be developed domestically. Not every foreign acquisition is a loss. The global economy is a network of interdependencies, and attempting complete self-sufficiency would be both unrealistic and harmful.
But there is a difference between interdependence and dependence. Partners cooperate because both sides contribute value. A dependent customer buys because they have neither an alternative nor the expertise to assess the offer.
Identity without expertise becomes decoration. Expertise without roots, meanwhile, can easily become a service supplied to someone else’s brands. We need both: the ambition to create and responsibility for the place where the fruits of that work will serve future generations.
Poland does not have to choose between factory and laboratory
This is not about closing factories. It is about opening laboratories, data centres, design offices, SaaS companies, prototype facilities and standards-development teams alongside them. It is about Polish engineers being more than excellent executors of someone else’s idea: they should also co-own the technology they work on.
A factory provides work today. A laboratory increases the chance that in ten years we will still decide what we produce and why.
Poland has engineers, entrepreneurs, universities, an industrial base and access to one of the world’s largest single markets. What we lack is not talent, but more often the scale of ambition, patient capital, trust and continuity between idea and implementation.
Our generation faces a simple choice. We can efficiently carry out a transition designed elsewhere. Or we can become one of the places where that transition receives its technical language, tools and standards.
At Voltified Energy, we choose the second path.
Not because a Polish solution deserves special treatment, but because Polish engineers and entrepreneurs can build a solution good enough to make a real impact on Europe.
Poland cannot be only Europe’s factory. It must become its laboratory. And the best proof of business patriotism will be the moment Europe starts using tools created here.
If you manage a fleet, finance or insure vehicles, sell used EVs, work in servicing or valuation, or develop solutions for electric mobility, let us talk about cooperation.
Visit https://voltified.pl/, follow our blog and sign up for the newsletter. We publish market analyses, technical knowledge and updates on the next stages of independent traction-battery diagnostics and valuation.
Business patriotism means consciously building and strengthening domestic economic capabilities: technology, intellectual property, data, brands, capital, jobs and decision-making centres. It does not mean unconditionally choosing Polish products regardless of their quality.
No. Foreign capital can bring jobs, know-how, scale and access to markets. The key is whether the investment helps Poland develop its own capabilities and move up the value chain, rather than permanently remaining only an assembly location.
Because in a technology-driven economy, patents, algorithms, software, methodology and databases often determine competitive advantage, margins and control over product development. Manufacturing itself can be relocated; knowledge and standards are harder to replace.
From 18 February 2027, electric-vehicle batteries covered by EU regulation will have a digital passport accessible through a QR code. It is intended to improve transparency, traceability and the ability to manage the entire battery life cycle responsibly. The passport does not, however, automatically replace independent diagnosis of current technical condition or residual valuation.
The traction battery is one of an electric vehicle’s most expensive and important components. Without comparable data, buyers, sellers, leasing providers and insurers cannot reliably assess risk or vehicle value. Independent diagnostics reduce information asymmetry and support trust in the used-car market.
Voltified Energy is developing independent traction-battery diagnostics and certification, the BHV system for assessing residual value and the Voltified Fleet Intelligence platform in Poland. The aim is to create Polish technological expertise that addresses the European problem of insufficient transparent, comparable battery data.
Mileage, age and service history are no longer enough to value a used electric vehicle fairly. The battery-its actual condition, the quality of available evidence and its impact on future costs-is becoming crucial. We examine why SoH alone is not enough and how BHV could change pricing, financing and trust in the EV market.
In finance, uncertainty carries the highest price. For electric fleets, that uncertainty has a name: residual-value risk. If you cannot prove the condition of a car’s most important component, the market will assume the worst, and your company will pay an “ignorance tax”. Find out how Voltified Fleet Intelligence is changing the way chief financial officers look at traction batteries.
From 18 February 2027, traction batteries entering the European Union market will receive a digital passport. This is an important step towards transparency, but a QR code will not automatically become a certificate of a battery’s current condition. We explain what the passport actually solves, what it cannot do and why the used-EV market will still need independent diagnostics, data interpretation and reliable valuation.
