The Brazilian university Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais asked me to give an online seminar for PhD students and professors entitled ‘Entrepreneurship and Local Development – the Example of Wrocław and the EU’. I agreed, and only later did I notice that it was scheduled for our midnight

Well, a promise is a promise, so when the day – or rather the night – came, I logged in and started telling the PhD students about the various ways we support businesses here, or rather I was answering their questions. And then came this one: ‘Does that mean that Poland’s economic success in recent decades has been due mainly to public aid for enterprises – various subsidies, tax breaks and other forms of EU and national support?’

And I thought: I must be explaining this badly, because the answer is NO! Support and other factors have been important, but what was crucial was the entrepreneurship of our entrepreneurs, both small and large – their creativity, adaptability, persistence in the face of countless problems, and their ability to turn some of those problems into opportunities.

In other words, what was key was the antifragility of many of them – that is, the ability to grow in, and even thanks to, a changing environment and adverse factors, developed as a result of their long-term impact. Exactly the kind of antifragility defined by the famous Nassim Taleb.

So I explained this by pointing out that too much public aid – and assistance in general – makes people, businesses and other organizations fragile; that is, sensitive to change, passive, expecting ever more help, dependent on it, and in such a situation it is hard to speak of economic or social development. What’s more, it is often better simply not to get in the way

Thank you, Prof. João Moreira, for organizing everything, you are great!