There are answers to every question and the only difference is whether they are good ones or poor ones
Many people seized the opportunity of the arrival of free market economy and made a fortune in Eastern Europe around 1990. Andrew Chew, founder of the Hong-gah Museum in Taipei, used to be the boss of Stan Shih before the latter founded Acer. Chew once told me how he had been able to stage a comeback in the Eastern European market. A lot of Taiwanese businessmen were eager to learn how they could make a fortune in Eastern Europe.
At the time, I was leading a team of researchers at MIC. My boss CW Chen asked me if I could do a study on the Eastern European market. Chen was a good boss, but my initial response was that I couldn't do it because I had never been to Eastern Europe. And I was aware that neither IDC nor Dataquest had produced any reports about Eastern Europe in their studies of the global PC market. But still I thought the prices of Taiwanese firms' products could be very attractive in Eastern Europe and at least we should collect some information that Taiwanese businesses could use.
I thought to myself that makers were simply trying to make strategies with which they could do business in Eastern Europe and to determine which ones among the nine major economies in Eastern Europe they should prioritize. I later told Chen I could do the study and then started collecting data of the PC market in Eastern Europe.
The data showed that the size of the PC market during the Soviet Union era was about 500,000 units, and that one PC was sold for every US$4 million in GDP. Based on the data, I estimated the sizes of the nine major markets in Eastern Europe. I also concluded that the Czech Republic should be the number-one choice for investors as it had a considerable foundation in precision machinery. Hungary, which made consumer and household electronics, such as refrigerators and washing machines, would also be an ideal entry point into Eastern Europe.
These were rough answers to the questions that I had been asked. But during those days, there was no Internet or handsets, and even the PC market was just starting to emerge. The study I did was just better than nothing. Chen later arranged a symposium where we reported our research results to industry players.
The symposium was quite a success. A few years later I was assigned to attend a global tech forum in Hungary. At the time I already had some rough ideas of the countries in Eastern Europe. I was aware of the significance of Russia's oil pipeline going through Ukraine, and the strategic significance of the Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline reaching Germany through the Baltic Sea.
I may not need such knowledge for work at all, but it gives me a bigger picture of what I see in the news and what I read in the books. While I was standing on the Chain Bridge in Budapest admiring the River Danube, I knew that if I had avoided the challenges coming my way, I wouldn't be where I was.
There are answers to every question, and your answer shows how hard you've worked on it. And the hard work enriches our lives. If you miss the opportunities, it's your own problem.
