Throughout Central Europe and the Soviet Union, computer entrepreneurs are emerging from the shells of state organizations to begin the exhilarating yet chaotic process of building a market economy. The customer base is eager and literate. The programmers are smart and inventive. Few people are complacent, and many are scared. No one can control this unfolding process. Either they can contribute to it, as the entrepreneurs are doing, or they can get out of the way, as I hope governments East and West will do.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 1991 issue of Harvard Business Review.
