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• E-Selling Caricom

Annalee C. Babb annalee_at_murrow.org
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Outline

• Main Question/Central Arguments
• ICT Development
• Ways of Thinking About Access
• National Knowledge Infrastructure NKI for
  Growth
• Innovating Technology Services
• Conclusion Knowledge-Driven Development
• Recommendations

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Main Question

• Several Caricom member states moving to invest
  heavily and quickly in necessary ICT
  infrastructures to promote e-commerce
• But, what products and services are they planning
  to sell in the high-value-added Internet
  marketplace?

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Central Arguments

• Real barrier to e-commerce growth and long-term
  development of islands of Caribbean Community
• Lack of enabling environment for creation,
  processing diffusion of new knowledge, ideas
  innovation
• Solution Creation of a National Knowledge
  Infrastructure (NKI) for development, built on
• Operational access to new digital media within
• an efficient National System of services
  Innovation

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Link Between Telecoms Development

• Is there a correlation between investment in
  telecoms development?
• Causality runs both ways
• ICT investments Economic growth
• ICT investments Economic growth
• Heather Hudson, 1997

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Product Cycles

• ICT policy-making product cycle
• From utopian pronouncements to more critical
  analyses
• Today, many policy-makers still euphoric about
  ICT potential
• Scholars are becoming more critical, but
• Still strong belief that new digital media hold
  tremendous promise for development
• Ernest J. Wilson III, 1997

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If You Have a Hammer

• To someone with a hammer, the whole world looks
  like a nail
• It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a
  hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail
• -- Abraham Maslow

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Making Room for Difference

• Each society has its own strengths/weaknesses
• Different levels of receptivity to technological
  innovation/change
• Every developmental issue facing less advanced
  economies is not equivalent to Maslows nail
• Nor is its solution necessarily to be found in
  the hammer of a specific technology or
  technological application
• i.e., the new digital media/the e-commerce
  services/applications they make possible

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Old Economy vs. New Economy

• Strong correlation between ability to be
  competitive in the old economy and ability to
  stay competitive in the Internet economy
• Technology sectors crash beginning in 2000
• Structural problems in Asian economies
• E-commerce penetration by region is closely
  linked to education and affluence (economic and
  social development)

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The High Stakes Internet

• E-commerce stats
• B2B transactions worldwide could top the US1
  trillion mark by 2006
• Corporations internationally could save more than
  US1 trillion in 2002 doing business over the
  Internet
• The stakes are high motivating countries
  businesses to make huge investments to be part of
  the lucrative e-commerce space

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Caricoms ICT/E-Commerce Strategies

• Barbados example
• Telecoms liberalization/deregulation, sector
  competition
• IPR protection
• E-commerce legislation
• Proposed bankruptcy bill
• Edutech2000

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Caricoms Structural Challenges

• Productivity/efficiency gains from domestic
  e-commerce activities too small to sustain
  economic growth
• Also tiny local production base in manufacturing,
  agriculture
• Heavy dependence on a few foreign exchange
  earning sectors
• Risk-averse private sectors not responsive to
  innovation/change
• Public sector inertia inefficiency
• Absence of national systems/policies for services
  sector innovation
• Little success moving to high-value-added tech
  products services

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• The art of selling things well is useless to
  someone who has little or nothing to sell

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Solution

• I propose creation/nurturing of National
  Knowledge Infrastructure (NKI) as central
  framework for development/economic growth
• Places knowledge at center of development at
  every level of economy and society
• Components of the NKI
• Operational access to new digital media in
• an efficient National System of services
  Innovation

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Understanding Access

• Physical Access
• Financial Access
• Secure Access
• Operational Access

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Stepping up the Technology Ladder
What is required for Barbados/ Caricom/ OECS to
Move up the ICT/Knowledge Ladder?
Operational Access (knowledge)
Secure Access
Barbados/ Caricoms Target Position
Financial Access
Barbados Current Position?
Physical Access
OECS Current Position?
OECS Organization of Eastern Caribbean States
Source Adapted from Vongpivat, 2002
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Elements of an NSI
Framework Components
Sources

• Public
• Private
• Academia

Policy
Government
Production
Private Sector
Research
Academia
Source Vongpivat 2002
Macro environment
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Innovation in Services

• Pratana Vongpivat In NSI, government policy
  plays crucial role in sparking competition,
  demand for and supply of new technologies
• Her model, like NSI literature in general,
  explores mainly productive/ manufacturing sectors
  of an economy
• My research argues it is vital for Caricom states
  to create national systems that foster innovation
  in high-value-added technology services sectors
• OECD has just begun to look at this for its
  member states
• More research necessary in general, and for
  Caricom

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Conclusion

• Operational Access (to ICT)
• NSI (in services)
• NKI (knowledge creation)

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Some Recommendations

• National education curricula that focus on
  absorption of information as well as teaching
  of logic, creative thinking and critical analysis
• Targeted regional partnerships between private
  sectors, academia and governments for diffusion
  of specified knowledge/technologies
• Software and e-commerce institutes to foster
  student, teacher, knowledge exchange between
  regions MDCs and LDCs
• Attraction/effective utilization of high-tech
  financial, intellectual and physical capital of
  Caribbean Diaspora

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More Recommendations

• Fostering of risk-taking/innovative culture in
  Caricom private sectors
• Example Bankruptcy laws to encourage invention
  originality, rather than penalizing actors for
  business failures
• Creation of appropriate RD environment
• Would support efforts of inexperienced companies
  in developing, commercializing new
  high-technology products and services
• Incentives to UWI to integrate new digital
  technologies services across main and satellite
  campuses, and devote more capacity to RD in
  support of private sector, general economic
  growth
• Academia might work together with international
  organizations

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My Research Network

• Lee W. McKnight, Paul Vaaler, and Raul Katz,
  Mobile Nations. Creative Destruction in Emerging
  Markets, (under review by MIT Press), 2003.
• Lee W. McKnight, Paul Vaaler, and Raul Katz,
  eds., Creative Destruction. Business Survival
  Strategies in the Global Internet Economy, MIT
  Press, 2001, 2002 Japanese translation Toyo
  Keizai, 2003.
• Peter Cukor and Lee McKnight, Knowledge
  Networks, the Internet, and Development, The
  Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 25, no. 1,
  March 2001, pp. 43-58.
• Pratana Vongpivat, A National Innovation System
  Model Industrial Development in Thailand,
  Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 2002, Medford,
  MA The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.