The leadership team of Winged IT, Anna Stolarz and Wiktor Tarnawski, have just returned from the ABSL Summit 2026. The event took place from June 17 to 19 in the historic Centennial Hall in Wrocław. This year’s edition was organized under the powerful and timely theme “Know the Unknown.” It brought together over 1,500 global business leaders, tech visionaries, and C-level executives to navigate the rapid transformations reshaping the global business services sector.

For Winged IT, this event held a unique milestone. Having officially joined the Association of Business Service Leaders last year, this marked our very first time participating in the Summit as proud members. The experience more than lived up to expectations, offering high-level strategic dialogues, peer-to-peer validation, and invaluable networking opportunities.

Beyond the Hype: Responsible AI and the “Human Touch”

The absolute highlight of the event was the strategic keynote by Professor Geoffrey Hinton, 2024 Nobel Prize laureate and the “godfather of AI”. His thought-provoking talk on the rise of superintelligence introduced a much-needed tone of civilizational responsibility and humility into the tech discourse.

strategic keynote by Professor Geoffrey Hinton, 2024 Nobel Prize laureate and the "godfather of AI"

The informal discussions across the summit floor perfectly mirrored this shift from blind tech-optimism to operational maturity. A few critical takeaways particularly resonated with our mission at Winged IT:

  • “A fool with a tool is still a fool” – Technology does not replace human judgment, process understanding, or critical thinking. Implementing AI just for the sake of the hype is a dead end. The focus must always return to solving real-world business problems.
  • Does AI Think… or Does It Calculate? – AI today is essentially a prediction engine trained on vast amounts of human knowledge. It mimics reasoning and reflects human-like responses, but it cannot replace judgment, intuition, and context. We need to shift our mindset from “keeping the human in the loop” to “keeping the human in charge.”
  • The Dangerous Illusion of Shared Responsibility – When it comes to corporate AI implementation, the debate has shifted from “what leaders look like” to who actually owns AI, signs off on it, and takes the call when something goes wrong. True AI governance requires strict accountability. Shared responsibility across an organization without clear ownership is often just abdication with better branding.
  • Leadership Sovereignty in Times of Disruption – In a world of continuous information overload, expanding leadership impact is more critical than learning basic AI fluency. AI can help companies process more data, but it cannot decide what matters most. Leaders are needed to help teams navigate precisely when answers are not obvious.
  • The Shift to Meta-Skills – AI reshapes the workplace, no doubts about it. Now more than ever organization’s most valuable asset is a team that learns and adapts fast. In this environment, upskilling and reskilling are no longer optional, bu rather become the core strategic imperatives.
Poland has officially outgrown the legacy transactional model of simple headcount scaling and labor arbitrage
Poland has officially outgrown the legacy transactional model of simple headcount scaling and labor arbitrage

The New Definition of Value: Moving Closer to Dublin than Detroit

Discussion panels and informal “Night Talks” at the Wrocław Congress Center strongly aligned with the macroeconomic reality we recently analyzed in our feature on Poland’s rise as a global tech and business services hub.

The latest ABSL Annual Report highlights the massive scale of Poland’s tech and GBS ecosystem. It spans 500,500 professionals serving over 280 of the world’s largest companies. However, the core anxiety in the room was not about growth, but about relevance.

Everyone knows the sector can no longer be sustained by simply being cheaper or getting bigger. The ambition articulated by the business community throughout the summit was crystal clear. Poland is shifting toward an innovation-driven, high-value ecosystem. It is moving closer to the tech-hub model of Dublin than the transactional factory model of Detroit. Global enterprises are no longer just nearshoring back-office tasks here. They are now actively building out strategic centers of excellence in Cloud, Data Architecture, and Advanced Cybersecurity.

Poland is shifting toward an innovation-driven, high-value ecosystem

Deep Gratitude for ABSL Summit 2026 and Looking Forward

The ABSL Summit 2026 provided an incredible platform for honest, transparent, and buzzword-free leadership dialogues. We had the privilege of reconnecting with our long-term partners. But we also managed to establish bonds with international investors exploring the European and Polish markets. We also had a chance to exchange practical insights with tech leaders who are actively shaping the regional digital frontier.

Participating in the ABSL Summit for the first time as an official member was a profoundly rewarding experience. We feel immense gratitude for being part of such a mature, collaborative, and forward-thinking business community.

The scale of the ABSL ecosystem serves as a powerful market signal to international companies – Poland is no longer just a delivery location. Quite the contrary, it became the default environment where global enterprises design, build, and scale their core high-value capabilities.

Let’s Scale Your Next Strategic Team

The insights gathered from Wrocław reinforce the exact tactical, on-the-ground support we provide every day at Winged IT. Navigating the modern hiring dynamics and securing battle-tested engineering talent under real-world pressure requires a partner who understands the local ecosystem from the inside out.

Are you thinking about building an elite tech or cybersecurity footprint in Poland? Let’s connect for a practical, honest conversation on how to seamlessly plug your organization into this thriving, high-value tech hub.