Last year the production arm of the last indigenous European computer manufacturer, Siemens Nixdorf, was sold to Acer, of Taiwan. The European entrepreneurs that should exist don't. Sociology almost always dominates technology. Ideas often lie unused because people do not want to use them. The fact that something is possible does not mean that it will happen.
Great persistence is needed to bring a truly new idea into the market.
The right sociology had to be in place for revolutionary new products to emerge. The online version of this article appears in four parts. Click here to go to parts one, three, and four. Lester C. Thurow is a professor of management and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Illustrations by Alison Seiffer .