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Tech Leaders Tackle Emerging Markets
The world's impoverished populations represent a profound opportunity for businesses to expand into new markets and spur innovation, according to C.K. Prahalad, a business strategist and professor at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Business.
"If you focus on digital divide, we may be too restrictive," Prahalad said.
Prahalad argued that the world's poor populations present opportunities in an emerging market at a digital divide conference held last week in Seattle. The conference, sponsored by the World Resource Institute, brought together select groups of business leaders and government officials to address ways of creating opportunities for individuals on the wrong side of the digital divide.
Businesses need to change their perspective, Prahalad said, to find ways in which third world countries could apply technology to their own daily experiences.
Prahalad emphasized the need to build a logistical foundation around efforts to bridge the digital divide. "I want to come and focus on logistics, not just how do you connect people to the Internet," he said. "It is easier to connect people to the Internet, but you can’t give them goods and services," he said.
The populations Prahalad are concerned with include people who make less than $500 per year. "How do you create and active market first, and how do you go from there to create a source of innovation in this population," he asked.
The first challenge is overcoming what Prahalad called the "mental divide," or the failure of business leaders to market goods and services to only those populations in the top economic tier. He argued that by changing the paradigm of how business deliver services and their approach to commerce for the world's poorest, there is opportunity everywhere.
Including The World
As part of the Seattle digital divide conference, Hewlett Packard unveiled its World e-Inclusion program, aimed at bridging the gap between technology haves and have nots by partnering with a variety of players to deploy technology into emerging markets. The company has already signed an agreement with TeltechGlobal to bring satellite telecenters to rural areas.
Lyle Hurst, director of World e-Inclusion, said the program reflects Prahalad's assertions because it is taking technology to the underserved and applying it in a variety of ways to yield tangible benefits. The program will create hundreds of "digital villages" around the world and provide local residents access to improved methods for communications and productivity.
Prahalad said there are already numerous examples of villages in places such as India where farmers can access information on the Internet to find market prices for their crops, and therefore be able to bargain and sell their products more efficiently. "If you don't innovate in these countries, Prahalad warned conference attendees, "you may be comprising your own future in developed market."
Hurst explained that Hewlett Packard's program contains three overarching principles
First, "e-Inclusion is amore about people than about technology," Hurst said. "While we will bring technology to bear, we start first and foremost with people." Second, the focus of the program will be based on a "economic system" based on loose partnerships. "No one can do this along," he said. Finally, the program plants a firm commitment to sustaining the investment in these regions.
Hewlett Packard already has partnered with groups like the Lincos Foundation to provide telecenters in rural villages in lesser-developed countries. These centers, Hurst explained, are delivering new information and enabling citizens to access ways to improve their lives through services such as telemedicine.
"We are taking a multi-dimensional approach," said Gary Fazzio, Hewlett Packard's vice president for government and public affairs. "In addition to…the e-Inclusion program, the company has been very active for years around the world…(providing) access to economic development for all."
G-8 Tackles Cyber Crime
Turning attention to the issue of security on the Internet, the Group of Eight (G-8) countries are meeting this week in Berlin to address the challenges of dealing with cyber crime and cyber terrorism, among other issues, Reuters reported. "Already today losses from cyber crime are 100 billion German marks, or $42.9 billion, a year. And without a doubt, this is only the beginning,'' a German official said. "Of the criminal activity registered by Germany's crime agency in 1999, 80 percent had traces leading to the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia and Russia.''
India Lawmakers Crafting Digital Legislation
During a meeting last week in New Delhi, the government's Group of Ministers for Telecommunication and Information Technology finalized plans to form a communications commission similar the U.S. Federal Communication Commission. India's commission would regulate the convergence of telecom, information technology and digital broadcasting. The plan will be presented under the Communications Bill 2000, which will be finalized during the Indian Parliament's winter session beginning in mid-November.
Last week, India Digital signature legislation took effect, while the government is mulling plans to issue national ID smart cards as away to keep tabs on its IT talent pool.
Wireless Auctions Abound
Italy's spectrum auction closed this week falling short of the government's expectations. The government raised a little more then $10 billion, half of what it aimed to earn by auctioning five licenses for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), or third general wireless spectrum.
But in the United Kingdom, telecommunications firms British Telecommunications and Deutsche Telekom's One 2 One are seeking a court review of a government decision demanding full payment for third generation spectrum licenses, four months ahead of other license recipients. Meanwhile Greece has set Dec. 4 for its UMTS spectrum auction, and Hong Kong is making plans to set a date for its spectrum auction.
Gartner Warns Of Cyber Security Problems In Asia
Asian countries are woefully unprepared to face the security challenges of the networked word, according to analysts with market research firm the Gartner Group. During it’s annual IT expo in Australia this week, Joe Sweeny, a Gartner analyst, said that at least 80 percent of companies in the region face security threats, and few are actually taking necessary precautions to prevent cyber attacks, the South Morning China Post reported.
Gartner recently began tracking episodes of so-called "hactivsm" around Asia nations. Bob Hayward, head of Asia Pacific research for Gartner, told an audience at a separate symposium that China may not be a source of e-commerce growth despite its booming online population. "I pick up the paper every week and see surveys where people make the invalid assumption that if the number of Internet users goes from 20 million to 60 million you are going to see a corresponding increase in the amount of e-commerce going on in China," he said. "We don't think it is going to happen." Gartner Group projects that business-to-consumer e-commerce in China will be worth only $571 million by 2003, up only modestly — in Internet terms — from the $27 million currently. Gartner also predicts that the Chinese market will be worth less than the Malaysian market, $769 million, and will fall far behind the $2.7 billion expected for the Hong Kong market.
- by Maureen Sirhal
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