ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to compare the trajectories of the entrepreneurial developments and internationalization among the CEE countries presented in the current volume in the context of economic development. The countries coming from the former communist system are not homogeneous by their historical background, path dependency, and political choices at the beginning of transition since the late 1980s and 1990s. As a result, different patterns of transition appear in their development from factor-driven to innovation-driven stages. Inequality inside the particular country groups with similar legacies 25 years ago was smaller than can be seen now. The best successors of the transition and creating favorable entrepreneurial ecosystems have been the Baltic and Central European countries, and Slovenia, which started the market economy and democratic reforms in the early 1990s; Belarus, Ukraine, and Serbia are still in transition. The example case studies show the role of entrepreneurs in reshaping traditional industries (cases from Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus), creating a new economy – knowledge-based high-technology startups (Estonia, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia), and innovating through existing and new businesses (Hungary, Slovenia, and Ukraine). All the case companies were led by entrepreneurs to international markets. Entrepreneurship and internationalization are seen as an outcome as well as an engine of transition processes in a particular country.
