Knowledge Transfer from the Outside or Self-Learning? Keys to Success for the Establishment of Innovative Companies in Eastern Germany After 1989

The majority of today’s family businesses in the former East Germany were founded in the early 1990s. The founders of these companies had been brought up and trained in a socialist system, and then suddenly faced the great challenge of having to establish or convert a company to function in the capitalist system. The question therefore arises: where did the founders obtain the knowledge to run a company under the new economic and political conditions? To whom do they owe their present success? The aim of this chapter is to explain, with the help of a qualitative empirical analysis, where entrepreneurs obtained the specific knowledge or skills for the establishment and successful management of innovative, technology-based, and knowledge-intensive companies in the market economy, despite the fact that they themselves had been socialized under the “old” socialist system.