“You know what Cuba doesn’t have?” asks Jorge Piñon, senior research associate at the UM Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS). He points to the Yellow Pages—a tiny piece of the massive infrastructure Cuba needs to acquire once the Castro regime falls.

The island nation has been frozen in an industrial time capsule since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. Non-U.S. companies conduct minimal business there, but an embargo has prohibited U.S. companies from doing so since 1962. With Castro’s health on the fritz and his brother General Raúl Castro in charge, the end of the Castro era could turn Cuba into a land of great opportunity.

Piñon, former president of Amoco Oil Latin America, is director of the Cuba Business Roundtable at ICCAS, created last year to help U.S. companies prepare for doing business in a post-Castro Cuba. For $10,000 a year, each of the roundtable’s 20-plus clients receives a monthly business and investment newsletter, focus reports, profiles on specific industry sectors, seminars, and access to ICCAS resources and experts. Some companies pay more for custom reports. Graduate students do much of the research, and risk assessment is a key feature.

“Emerging markets are like a poker game,” Piñon says. “There are eight seats at the table, and you’re dealt a hand. You can play it, fold, or walk away from the table knowing that someone else might take your seat. The question is, how can you play but minimize your risk?”

Cuba’s relatively small population of 11 million means it will have fewer economic openings than larger emerging markets like China or Eastern Europe. Conditions will be ripe for a middle class to flourish.

“You’re not going to have 20 Home Depots, but you’re going to have a bunch of Ace Hardware stores, and the capital for that is going to come from a family in Hialeah,” Piñon says.

The U.S. government is eager to help build economic stability because without it there’s a risk of a mass exodus from Cuba. Concerns like these are why the U.S. Agency for International Development has funded ICCAS’s Cuba Transition Project, which makes recommendations for the reconstruction of a post-Castro Cuba.

“It is going to be a very slow and difficult transition,” says ICCAS director Jaime Suchlicki, who expects the process will take three to five years.

Besides the Cuba Business Roundtable, ICCAS maintains a quarterly electronic journal; a monthly current events report from former CIA officer Brian Latell; a genealogy project; and Casa Bacardi, an interactive cultural center.