I am excerpting on this blog roughly 10% of my next book, The New Technology Elite due out in February (and available for pre-order on Amazon – see badge on left) . The text is going through the publisher’s edits and subject to change. Here are some excerpts from Chapter 4.
Mike Laven’s bio modestly states he “has had a long career in financial technology in both Silicon Valley and London.” But starting with his M.A. in International Affairs from The School for International Training from Harvard and Peace Corp assignment in India, and numerous technology jobs in between, he is equally at home in Paris and Delhi and Tel Aviv. He truly is a “global citizen”.
He describes a scene at a spa in June of 2011 – it’s a spa in Southern Germany he has visited on a regular basis
“Well-off clientele and always totally global: Egyptians, Russians, Israelis, Lebanese, the Stans, smatterings of everywhere else, many Europeans and rarely an American. The universal adoption of the iPad this year is incredible—everyone has one, ages 25-70. (Interestingly, zero of other tablets which I see a lot of in the US, while everyone else is talking Apple locked up global opinion makers). People are doing mail, checking local newspapers, getting news from home but this is not a surfing/gaming crowd. Reminds me of last year’s universal adoption of the Stieg Larsson novels, when everyone was reading the same book in different languages.”
Apple’s global prowess is impressive but it is a mature 30+ year old company.
How about Groupon getting to almost $ 650 million in quarterly revenue as a 2 year old startup? 3 It has been called the fastest growing company of all time – and it has done so by buying stakes in similar coupon/deal sites around the world including CityDeal in Germany, Darberry in Russia, ClanDescuento in Chile and Qpod in Japan and offering daily deals in over 500 cities around the world.
Or Netflix. It was primarily a US player till it expanded into Canada in 2010 with modest results as its streaming service has been hindered by low data caps by the country’s broadband ISPs. That led people to believe it would expand globally cautiously. To the surprise of many it announced plans to enter Latin America in a big way – to 43 countries – and potentially at a significant risk!
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Actually, the world is not that flat. Pankaj Ghemawat, in his book World 3.0 calls that view “globaloney”
Why?
“Because economic data simply don't support the view that we live in a flat, connected world, even if we are technologically connected with everyone, everywhere, all of the time. Data show that most types of economic activity that could be carried out across national borders are actually still concentrated domestically.”
Look at the world from someone “down under”. Ben Kepes is an analyst with Diversity, Ltd in New Zealand:
“I live a life full of dichotomies. I live in rural New Zealand – in the midst of an idyllic valley and surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. My working life however sees me visit the US several times each year, and spend most of my working day interacting with colleagues overseas – primarily in the US but in other countries as well. This dual-life gives me an interesting perspective into technology and it’s uptake in different countries. My regular visits to other countries give me a perspective on the relative speed of technology adoption in different locations.
Case in point – broadband. New Zealand has a single fiber optic cable connecting it with the outside world. As would be expected, this single cable (or more correctly, the single provider that sells access to the cable) means that data caps, poor access speeds and capacity throttled for commercial reasons are the norm. While moves are currently underway to lay an alternative cable between New Zealand and the outside world – it’s fair to say that the realities of limited connectivity have had an impact on the uptake of technology. Given that the vast majority of data citizens access comes from outside our own borders, it never surprises me that smart phones are still a relatively unique phenomenon in New Zealand, at least compared to Silicon Valley where it’s rare to see someone without a data enabled mobile device.
It is perhaps for this reason that New Zealand is one country where eBay hasn’t realized market domination of the online auction space.
In other areas however, where connectivity isn’t such an issue, we’re real leaders in technological innovation. Witness EFTPOS, our own debit card system for electronic transaction processing. EFTPOS (short for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale), was introduced here in 1985 as a pilot scheme in Gas stations. Since that time EFTPOS has become very much the de-facto way of paying for goods. The majority of all retail transactions are processed using EFTPOS, a figure that puts New Zealand close to the top of global debit card usage. In fact a random observation at convenience stores, gas-stations and other retail outlets see that New Zealand has almost attained that long-predicted status of a cashless society”.
In such an uneven world it helps to have a “human-behavior researcher” like Jan Chipchase who carries his Nikon around the world to send pictures back to Nokia designers.
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Two thirds of Iceland’s population (approximately 320,000) is on Facebook, so the council which is revising its constitution broadcasts its weekly meetings live not only on the council’s website, but on the social network as well.
Singapore has turned itself into a laboratory, teaming with MIT to form the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) center to examine the "future of urban mobility" as well as other growth issues. Its purpose? "To study how cities work and how they can work better,"
Joe Garde of IrishDebate.com points out the Irish are the "glue" in many enterprises around the world - something which allows the Irish Diaspora outside Ireland estimated at 20 X the population in the island to thrive. It challenges the Irish government though – should it prepare its young talent to “export” as it did for decades or find a way to attract multi-nationals to invest there as they seek tech-savvy talent and replicate its more recent “Celtic Tiger” success.
S. Korea is investing 2.2 trillion Won ($2 billion) under its Smart Education program, to digitize all elementary and secondary school textbooks currently in use so they can be read on a variety of devices, including computers, interactive whiteboards, iPad-like tablets and smartphones. Classes will also be video-streamed online so children who can't come in due to poor health or weather don't miss out. Children with disabilities may also benefit: e-books could be controlled by eye-tracking or gesture recognition, for example.
Quincy in rural part of Washington state has quietly become a data center hub for companies like Dell, Intuit and many others “Quincy officials say the data center building boom is helping them buck the trend. Real estate prices are rising, and tax revenue surged to $2.24 million last year, from $700,000 in 2005, according to City Administrator Tim Snead. Quincy recently spent $1 million on a new library and $75,000 for a new museum parking lot. It repaved 60 percent of the streets, bought a hook-and-ladder truck for the fire department, and erected an edifice for such services as the management of parks and water.”
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