After the Rain : how the West lost the EastVaknin, Samuel
History
After the Rain : how the West lost the East
Vaknin, Samuel
Europe, Eastern -- Economic conditions -- 1989-; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- 1989-
Generators of Intellectual Property - These are economies that
encourage and emphasize innovation and progress. They reward
innovators, entrepreneurs, non-conformism and conflict. They spew out
patents, designs, brands, copyrighted material and other forms of
packaged human creativity. They derive most of their income from
licensing and royalties and constitute one of the engines driving
globalisation. Still, these economies are too poor to support the
complementary manufacturing and marketing activities. Their natural
counterparts are the "Industrial Bases". Within the former Eastern
Bloc, Russia, Poland, Hungary and Slovenia are, to a limited extent,
such generators. Israel is such an economy in the Middle East.
Industrial Bases - These are economies that make use of the
intellectual property generated by the former type within industrial
processes. They do not copy the intellectual property as it is. Rather,
they add to it important elements of adaptation to niche markets, image
creation, market positioning, packaging, technical literature,
combining it with other products or services, designing and
implementing the whole production process, market (demand) creation,
improvement upon the originals and value added services. These
contributions are so extensive that the end products, or services can
no longer to be identified with the originals, which serve as mere
triggers. Again, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia (and to a lesser extent,
Croatia) come to mind.
Consumer Oriented economies - These are Third Wave (Alvin Toffler's
term), services, information and knowledge driven economies. The
over-riding set of values is consumer oriented. Wealth formation and
accumulation are secondary. The primary activities are concerned with
fostering markets and maintaining them. These "weightless" economies
concentrate on intangibles: advertising, packaging, marketing, sales
promotion, education, entertainment, servicing, dissemination of
information, knowledge formation, trading, trading in symbolic assets
(mainly financial), spiritual pursuits, and other economic activities
which enhance the consumer's welfare (pharmaceuticals, for instance).
These economies are also likely to sport a largish public sector, most
of it service oriented. No national economy in CEE qualifies as
"Consumer Oriented", though there are pockets of consumer-oriented
entrepreneurship within each one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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