Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a general overview of the emerging digital economy with relevant questions and challenges for Central and Eastern European industry. The internationalisation and globalisation of the world economy in which the world-wide trend towards trade liberalisation is the most prominent. The book is the synthesis of a research project that took the abovementioned challenge as a point of departure. The research project is about the diffusion and effective use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in industry in Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. The book sketches the advance of Information Society in Central and Eastern Europe. It summarises main research findings with respect to ICT usage in selected sectors and presents a comparative analysis of sectoral research. The book presents the research results that are evaluated in the perspective of the transformation of the global economy.