Poland's policy on science and R&D must improve if its economy is to adapt to future needs Shutterstock

When discussing the future of the Polish economy – or practically any other relatively well-developed economy for that matter – the buzzwords of today include “innovation,” “green technologies” or “outsourcing.”

How quickly time flies. Just 10 years ago the big talk was of the “rise of the online economy” or “globalization.” These are now taken for granted.

And what shape will the economy take in, say, 2050? Scrying the future of any economy is a tricky, largely academic exercise, albeit an interesting one. In Poland’s case, even a cursory look at the past reveals just how quickly – and dramatically – the situation can change in just a short period of time.

Poland 1970

Forty years ago Poland was experiencing a period of tumult. Pronounced inflation sparked protests in the north, which in turn precipitated the end of Władysław Gomułka’s 14 years at the helm of the Communist Party.

When Edward Gierek became first secretary in December 1970, he promised economic reform and a “scientific and technological revolution” which would trade Soviet solutions for Western technology. New, imported technologies flowed in, with massive amounts of money spent on investments in industry, such as an oil refinery in Gdańsk.

However, better living standards for the nation’s 32 million citizens were short-lived.

Gierek’s boom was facilitated mainly through foreign loans, obtained thanks to warming relations with Western politicians. The first cracks began appearing in the mid-1970s and an economic slowdown followed soon after.

Who then could have predicted the Poland of 2010 – a thriving democracy, with a 20-year tradition of capitalism? Few, if any.

“I remember a conference in the 1960s about prognoses for the year 2000,” professor Zdzisław Sadowski of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ “Polska 2000 Plus” Prognosis Committee reminisced. “One of them was that we would use disposable clothes.”

Poland 2050

What can be said with relative certainty about the Poland of 2050? Barring catastrophe, the number of the elderly is certain to rise. According to Eurostat, every third Pole will be 65 or older by 2060.

Present population projections indicate that the population in 2050 will be about the size it was back in 1970. According to the medium variant of the UN’s 2008 projections, Poland’s population will drop from its present 38 million people to 32 million. The low end of the projection puts the population at 27.96 million, the high end at 36.57 million.

“Those prognoses include immigration, but on a small scale,” explained Dr Piotr Szukalski, a sociologist from the University of Łódź and another “Polska 2000 Plus” member. “It is easy to forecast the number of old people, because they are already alive, but immigration numbers and birthrates are much more difficult to foresee.”

Changes in the structure of society will not only heavily influence the pension system, but also health care. “When the generations of the demographic high start to age, the funds spent on health care will also increase, as will the demand for home or institutional care of the elderly, creating a massive number of jobs in this industry,” said Mr Szukalski.

He also predicts that the population will be more diverse than it is now. “I think that Poland will look similar to present-day Belgium or the UK – a lot of older people on the streets and children of different ethnicities, because we will be forced to increase immigration, as there will be a shortage of unskilled workers,” said Mr Szukalski.

“The other side of the coin will be a shortage of highly qualified workers,” he continued. “We already have a shortage of engineers and this will only get worse.”

Stefan Dunin-Wąsowicz, director of strategy and M&A consulting at BPI Polska, a consultancy, agreed. “Poland will become much more varied – we are now very homogeneous as a nation, but I think that it is inevitable that we will open up to immigrants,” he said. “In my opinion, mostly from Asia.”

A ‘groupthink’ future

Marek Borzestowski, a co-founder of popular web portal Wirtualna Polska and a new technologies expert at the Sobieski Institute, a think tank, sees the future of the Polish economy being shaped by social marketing and “many-to-many” forms of communication and media.

“Facebook and other social networking sites will be with us for the next decades. One-to-many communication is slowly becoming the past,” he said.

Another phenomenon that will shape the future is social e-commerce – group shopping as well as recommending products and services to friends.

When Poles buy things, they may also be aided by new video technologies like augmented reality (trying on clothes virtually, without actually putting them on), which by then may be widely available.

According to Mr Dunin-Wąsowicz, social networking sites and mass participation are a signs of more important changes to come. “Developed economies will be turning away from economies of objects and things to the economy of sharing,” he said. “Instead of owning three printers, we will print something on open-access printers.”

According to him, the trend is already visible among today’s youth. “Social networking sites are not a coincidence. Young people nowadays are not looking for things online, but for sensations and relationships. The economy will move from things to services.”

Nevertheless, the economy of the future will also be built using new materials. “One such material is silicon carbide, which can be substituted for silicon in transistors, for example,” explained professor Andrzej Jeleński from the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology (ITME) in Warsaw. According to some researchers, the material could reduce energy loss by 15 percent.

Another promising material is graphene, which some are mooting as the successor of silicon in 20 to 30 years. ITME is one of several centers in the world working on silicon carbide.