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What was the better alterative at the time? EE was basically bankrupt in the early 90's. How could they have caught up to join the wealthy innovation driven co

What was the better alterative at the time? EE was basically bankrupt in the early 90's. How could they have caught up to join the wealthy innovation driven countries like UK, Netherlands, Germany and Nordics, on mere fractions of their education and research budgets and considering the massive social damage 45 years of communism has done to eradicate free thinking, innovation and entrepreneurship. Basically, post 1989, nobody had any idea how to run a business, how to do market research, marketing, sales, any of that, let alone build businesses that could challenge wealthy established players from the west, since none of that was taught in schools and universities during communism and now you have to catch up with over 45 years of lost progress over night. It was just not possible at the time, so being cheap outsourcing labor was the only choice to get out of poverty.

mathverse 3y ago
People truly underestimate the level of incompetence and corruption after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The EE lands were ripe for the taking and WE companies made sure to take everything as fast as possible. It was not even a battle it was just a pure massacre. That left those countries without any local champions or easy options to elevate themselves. I've said it many many times that it will take dozens of unicorns like UIPath in Romania to offset the loss of industries now dominated by DACH companies. Romania would need to become another Singapore which is almost impossible.
- ExoticPearTree 3y ago
  Not with the right dictator running it, it isn't :)
p_l 3y ago
The fun thing, at least in Poland, is that the most influential reforms were done in 1988 - in fact some of the better managed enterprises started reforming then, one of them being in pretty good shape - but got killed by politician due to what was party-internal strife... and no, we're not talking communist party - we're talking Solidarność. Then a bunch of actions were added on top in attempts to deal with large foreign currency debt, and they weren't exactly done well, and various economic areas were just destroyed with a strike of a pen, in what even the western advisers considered extreme ways. Those areas? They still haven't recovered, because there was nothing available for recovery. There was surprisingly a lot of free thinking, innovation, even entrepreneurship. Not everything was as bad as it was painted, not everything was as good as it was sometimes shown. One of the rare positive elements in all that chaos that some had pointed out and I agree was that the chaos at least ensured consumer goods were better represented and prevented oligarchic centralisation to the level that happened in some other countries.

mathverse 3y ago

People truly underestimate the level of incompetence and corruption after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The EE lands were ripe for the taking and WE companies made sure to take everything as fast as possible. It was not even a battle it was just a pure massacre. That left those countries without any local champions or easy options to elevate themselves. I've said it many many times that it will take dozens of unicorns like UIPath in Romania to offset the loss of industries now dominated by DACH companies. Romania would need to become another Singapore which is almost impossible.

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
Not with the right dictator running it, it isn't :)

p_l 3y ago

The fun thing, at least in Poland, is that the most influential reforms were done in 1988 - in fact some of the better managed enterprises started reforming then, one of them being in pretty good shape - but got killed by politician due to what was party-internal strife... and no, we're not talking communist party - we're talking Solidarność. Then a bunch of actions were added on top in attempts to deal with large foreign currency debt, and they weren't exactly done well, and various economic areas were just destroyed with a strike of a pen, in what even the western advisers considered extreme ways. Those areas? They still haven't recovered, because there was nothing available for recovery. There was surprisingly a lot of free thinking, innovation, even entrepreneurship. Not everything was as bad as it was painted, not everything was as good as it was sometimes shown. One of the rare positive elements in all that chaos that some had pointed out and I agree was that the chaos at least ensured consumer goods were better represented and prevented oligarchic centralisation to the level that happened in some other countries.