An (e-readiness) tale of two countries

When I was working for IBM, managing the Global Centre for Economic Development Research within the IBM Institute for Business Value, one of my favourite annually recurring projects the joint production of the e-Readiness Rankings report with the Economist Intelligence Unit. In this annual study we examined seventy countries in terms of their level of e-readiness, i.e. their ability to leverage information and communications technology to the benefit of their economy. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data looking at several aspects of e-readiness, including technical as well as legal, socio-cultural, business and policy and usage criteria, the countries were then ranked in terms of their e-readiness.

In the most recent editions of this annual report, Ireland and Germany tended to end up in similar position, for example, in 2010, Ireland was ranked 17 and Germany was ranked 18, both countries effectively swapping their respective 2009 ranks.

My own reaction Ireland’s and Germany’s e-readiness rank has always been a mix of disappointment and surprise:

Firstly, disappointment that these two countries did not do better: With Germany being a large, mature and technologically advanced economy and Ireland being a small, agile country with a young well educated population and an openness and commitment to information technology; it seemed both countries could and should have done better.

Secondly, surprise that two economies and countries so different tended to end up in similar ranks.

Below you can see the top 21 countries for e-readiness in 2010. No 2011 e-readiness report has been published yet ... I wonder what the rankings would have looked like this year ...

To or not to , that's the question !

I came across an interesting article from the New York Times this morning (Emoticons move to the business world) in which the spread of emoticons, those lovely smiley or non-smiley icons used in many an SMS or email, was discussed, especially their more recent spread to the business world.

Personally, even though my use of them is restricted to the most basic ones, I very much like emoticons and do not see them, as some do, as a sign of degeneration of language, a sign of lazyness or something else negative.

On the contrary, I think there are two reasons why emoticons are important: First, the Internet means that we use written language to a greater extent than before: Many a conversation that would have previously been oral has now moved to a written format, whether it is an SMS, an email, an instant message, or any other similar, Internet-enabled form of communication. Written communication has many advantages over oral communication, in particular its formality and its relative lack of ambiguity. But formality and lack of ambiguity are not always what is required in communication, especially not in early stages of relationship-building (be it in a private or business context), when a too formal and too straight approach can be off-putting and there typically is a need for a certain amount of informality and  ambiguity. Second, the Internet and the general trend to globalisation means we are now more often than not communicating across cultures and across languages. This means that the language we use in our written communication needs to be unambiguous and clear, as speakers of other languages or members of other cultures may not appreciate, or worse, misinterpret, any ambiguity introduced.

This is where, in my view, emoticons, come in very handy: They allow us walk this fine line between formality and informality, directness and ambiguity by using the power of written language for creating a communication that is as unambiguous and as formal as required in a business context. Yet, at the same time, in addition to the use of language, a well deliberated use of emoticons allows us to introduce some informality and lightheartedness into written communication. And, added benefits for all those who communicate across languages and cultures, due to the symbolic nature of emoticons, interpretation is clear and universal - bar some differences between use of emoticons in the Asian world, which are very interesting indeed and  need to be paid attention to.

So, what is your view ?  Are emoticons a good thing or should they be abandoned ?

Pride or Prejustice ?

Okay, I admit there is the odd day when I secretly long for those days: The days before computers, or more precisely before the Internet, were omnipresent and ubiquitous. Life seemed to be so much slower, so much more sheltered and safe. The former is probably true, the latter two more likely the result of the bliss of ignorance. And yes, ignorance can have its benefits sometimes ... :) !

But faced with the choice between Internet and No Internet, my choice is clearly in favour of its existence and I would find it rather hard to imagine life without. I'd rather give the TV a miss. Not a question!

This is why it fascinates me that some people opt out of the Internet.

In developed countries, with Internet penetration typically somewhere between 65% and 90%, depending the country (Internet penetration in the EU), people not using the Internet tend to be a minority. And there are some interesting correlations too regarding age, educational background, gender, income.

One part of the answer, of course, is the digital divide, i.e. the largely involuntary exclusion from the benefits of computing and the Internet as a result of financial, education and other circumstances. The other and more puzzling part of the answer relates to the people that voluntarily and quite consciously opt out.

So, when the recently published Oxford Internet Survey came out, I immediately skipped to the section on non-users and the latest analysis of their reasons for non-use.

The rather surprising answer - and interesting here to see the difference between ex-users and non-users - can be seen in the figure below .... and brings me back to the title of this blog and the question: ah, how exactly do I know I don't like something if I don't know it ???

Can slowness be a competitive advantage ?

I always find it interesting to see how attitudes towards the Internet are in many ways so different in Germany than in Ireland. Of course, it is always risky to draw conclusions based on non-scientific data, such as data from simply speaking to people and watching the overall flow of news, but I believe there are always some conclusions that can be made. And one is, that the Internet is viewed in a much more critical way in Germany than in, for example, Ireland. 

This includes issues such as data privacy, the impact of Internet on, for example, children and youths, the role of social media, especially Facebook (and its much disputed ‘like button’), Internet addiction etc. I will come back to some of these topics at a later stage, but what struck me today was a news article, which reported that Microsoft’s Streetside encountered far less resistance in Germany than Google’s Street View, with ca. 240,000 people in Germany asking Google to exclude their house from view compared to only ca. 90,000 requesting the same from Microsoft.

This raises several questions in my mind as to what might be the cause of this change in objections:

• Are times changing and are people becoming more used to what could and – in Germany – very much tends to be perceived as invasion of privacy
• Why did Microsoft choose such as ‘difficult’ market as one of the first European markets (after UK) to introduce Streetside ? 
• Was there less concern about Streetside in Germany, simply because of the relative unimportance of Microsoft’s search engine Bing in the German market, versus the prevalence of the Google search engine ? 
•  Was Microsoft’s proactive approach (see: http://www.microsoft.com/maps/streetside.aspx) towards dealing with data privacy concerns better than the rather reactive approach to issues  that Google adopted ? 
• Is it sometimes better not to be the first in bringing out of new product ?

The last question, in particular, is an interesting one to explore: New technology, especially technology that is aimed at the wide masses and impacts everyday life can have a longer adoption cycle. This gives the competition, especially the close follower in the market, a great opportunity to let the trailblazer do all the hard work in terms of educating and converting the market, while the competitor can use the time to fine-tune and optimize both the product and the approach to market. As Microsoft clearly did in this case, entering the market later, but very proactively in terms of the data privacy issues and also entering the market with added functionality, such as integration of Streetside with Flickr geo-tagged photos, which, I think, is a real treat indeed.

But there is of course a risk to such a delayed approach and we see it play out in the similar way in the fight for market share between Facebook and Google+ at the moment: With most people only using one application of the same type, can the late-comer convert and win back the early adopters and win critical mass?What do you think ?

Past performance is not indicative of future results

There is some talk these days, if the recent high evaluations of Internet companies like Facebook  are realistic or indeed if this could turn out to be a bubble similar to the Dotcom Boom and Bust at the beginning of this century. I remember the time in early 2000 well, as I worked in a corporate business development capacity then, specially focused on supporting these burgeoning internet start-ups by selling services and consulting to them – mostly design and development, some business consulting. I also remember that many of these start-ups just had an ‘e-business’ idea,  but often the management team had little real technical background or understanding and indeed sometimes possibly even less business background, judging by some of their business plans, which did not go much beyond the idea itself. And didn’t have to, as there was money and excitement in abundance! There were exceptions of course, some very notable and very interesting exceptions, but this is beside the point here. 

The point I am leading up to is the statistics on Internet users published by Internet World Stats (http://www.internetworldstats.com/ and Nua Ltd.  These go back as far as 1995 and show the massive increase in Internet users that has taken place over that period and as depicted in the Figure below.

And once again, I divert, as I remember the early 1990s equally well and the role that the Internet played then:  I was in my final year for my BSc (Hons) in IT in London and surely as an IT student should have been one of these early users. But I was not: the Internet did not show up in those IT lectures, indeed, got even less of a mention than object-oriented programming and C++, another yet to be discovered area at the time, and it was a German journalist friend of mine, visiting London, who raised my awareness when I had to accompany her to the first (?) Internet Cafe in London, a place she had heard about and wanted to write about. Well, as I said, different times...

But let’s come back to the chart with the history of Internet users: The data underlying the chart show, that in December 2000, there were 361 M Internet users worldwide, corresponding to a penetration rate of 5.8%.  Fast-forward eleven years to June 2011 and the numbers have dramatically changed: There are now 2,110 M Internet Users worldwide and penetration, worldwide and including many developing countries, has reached 30.4 %.

As is to be expected, penetration rates between regions and countries vary considerably. But even Africa, the region with the lowest penetration rate today, due an Internet growth of a staggering  2527.4 % (!) in this period, in 2011 has an Internet penetration rate of 11.4%, which is virtually double of what the global penetration rate was in 2000.

Of course, this does not protect from over-evaluation of Internet companies, just as over-evaluation of anything, be it bank shares or the housing market – as we have had to learn in the last few years – does happen in all sectors and probably will happen again. However, as far as Internet companies go, it is worth taking note that we do live in a different world today than we did in 2000: The Internet has become part of the daily diet for most of us, especially in developed countries. Not all of what is on offer on the Internet is needed for the daily diet; some parts are fads, others quirky snacks, others probably downright unhealthy, and a great many only relevant for subsets of Internet users.

 

Which of the more recent trends and fads will be added to our staple diet is yet to be seen and I think there are interesting times ahead. As they say (and finally say loudly) in the financial world: “Past performance is not indicative of future results”.