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				Steven O'Connor On entrepreneurship in Europe In 1992, I found myself in Eastern Europe in the media business where I watched people deal with change under the new system. Our business at New World Publishing is about making heroes out of Hungarian and Polish and Czech citizens who have taken a risk and started a business. Too many people in Europe still don't understand that money isn't bad. People still don't understand that accountability, individualism and meritocracy are the direction we all have to head in. It's frightening for me that "entrepreneur" is a bad word in Europe, that the old paradigm is still over everybody's heads, that there is a certain arrogance in the governmental belief that the common man and woman can't make important decisions themselves. What occured in the 1980s in the U.S. was an extraordinary explosion of wealth because taxes were cut and people individually went out and started their own businesses. Most people now in the U.S. are employed by small businesses. I heard someone say this is an American story, it could only happen there. It's not just an American story. I think people everywhere have the chance to go out and take a risk and make a difference, not be looked down upon for taking a risk. In our three newspapers every week, we show people in Central Europe who are taking risk, taking charge, and making a difference. In Eastern Europe, where the most advanced forms of socialism were pracised on people, the natural entrepreneur that is in everybody is reacting to previous complete control. People have started some extraordinarily organizations in Eastern Europe, there's almost no unemployment in the big capital cities in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. That's spreading throughout the country. The growth is there, because the energy is there. And I think the Eastern Europe has many things to teach Western Europe.
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