Impact of ICT Innovations

on Business
(Collaborating with ICT Innovations for
Business Survival)
Dr. Wayne Summers

Columbus State University,

Columbus, GA, US
summers_wayne@colstate.edu

IMPACT

It took 35 years from the date the

telephone was invented for it to
reach 25% of the world population.
It took 26 years for the television to
achieve the same feat,
16 years for the personal computer,
only seven years for the Internet

IMPACT

Internet users worldwide have

quadrupled between 2000 and 2005
In the world, there are now more
mobile than fixed line phones
Approximately 70% of the
developing worlds population now
lives within the footprint of a mobile
phone service

IMPACT
ICT plays a vital role in advancing
economic growth and reducing
poverty. A survey of firms carried out
in 56 developing countries finds that
firms that use ICT grow faster, invest
more, and are more productive and
profitable than those that do not
OVERALL SUMMARY OF THE IC4D
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTINFORMATIONANDCOMMUNICATIONANDTECHNOLOGIES/Re
sources/282822-1141851022286/IC4D-Summary.pdf

IMPACT
Information and communications
technologies (ICT) have had uneven
deployment both between nations
and within nations. These differences
in the use of ICT and the Internet
are part of the digital divide
Peslak, A. A review of national information and communication technologies (ICT) and a
proposed National Electronic Initiative Framework (NEIF), First Monday, volume 11,
number 5 (May 2006), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_5/peslak/

Impact of ICT Innovations on Business

Introduction
History / Development of
Information & communications
Technology (ICT)
Impact Of ICT Innovations On
Business
Future of ICT
Conclusions

Introduction

Information technology and business

are becoming inextricably
interwoven. I don't think anybody
can talk meaningfully about one
without the talking about the other.
Bill Gates

Introduction

That seems to me a vital point. It is incontestable that the

spread of computing power has reduced radically the costs
for companies of collecting, analysing, retrieving and reusing information. The growth of voice and data
communications means companies are increasingly able to
share and spread this information at great speed, over
large distances.
So as computers become cheaper and more powerful, the
business value of computers is limited less by
computational capability and more by the ability of
managers to invent new processes, procedures and
organisational structures that leverage this capability.
Just as electricity enabled development of the continuous
production line processes, the decentralised availability of
information through IT allows the reduction of hierarchical
structures within firms and greater empowerment and
capabilities for work teams and individual workers.

Introduction

ICTs can also transform a firm's relations with its

customers, providing increased scope to tailor
products to individual requirements.
ICTs also allow more lean and timely inventory
management.
In other words, investment appears to have a
greater beneficial impact if complemented by
organisational changes, greater use of delegated
decision-making and improvements in related
workforce skills.]
(http://www.dti.gov.uk/ministers/archived/alexan
der141101.html

History / Development of
Information & communications
Almost everybody
today believes
that nothing in
Technology
(ICT)
economic history has ever moved as fast as, or

had a greater impact than, the Information

Revolution. But the Industrial Revolution moved at
least as fast in the same time span, and had
probably an equal impact if not a greater one. Peter Drucker
The new information technologyInternet and
e-mailhave practically eliminated the physical
costs of communications. - Peter Drucker
I think there is a world market for maybe five
computers. - IBM Chairman Thomas Watson,
1943

History / Development of
Information & communications
Six stages of ICT
in public sector
Technology
(ICT)

Email System and Internet Network (internal

usage)
Enabling Inter-Organizational and Public Access to
Information (one way to public)
Allowing Two-way Communications (posting email
& fax addresses; tracking information status
reports)
Allowing Exchange of Values (public able to make
payments, etc.)
Digital Democracy
Portal for Citizens

Impact Of ICT Innovations On

Business

In the last forty years, adoption and

implementation in the public sector
has been slower than the private
sector in most of the Asia Pacific
countries. The private sector has
been encouraged to use ICT in many
types of business functions such as
information management, payroll,
and accounting since the 1960s.
[Ong 2001]

Future of ICT

Moore's Law asserts that the price of the Information

Revolution's basic element, the microchip, drops by 50
percent every eighteen months.
Peter Drucker argues that like the industrial revolution two
centuries ago, the information revolution so far has only
transformed processes that were here all along. In
contrast, he argues that E-commerce, facilitated by ICT,
has the potential to be to the information revolution what
the railroad was to the Industrial Revolution - a totally new,
totally unprecedented, totally unexpected development that
transformed both the mental and economic geography of
companies and communities.

conclusions

Security is, I would say, our top priority

because for all the exciting things you will
be able to do with computers.. organizing
your lives, staying in touch with people,
being creative.. if we don't solve these
security problems, then people will hold
back. Businesses will be afraid to put their
critical information on it because it will be
exposed.
Bill Gates

conclusions

This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on

knowledge workers. ...the most striking growth
will be in knowledge technologists: computer
technicians, software designers, analysts in
clinical labs, manufacturing technologists,
paralegals. ...They are not, as a rule, much better
paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see
themselves as professionals. Just as unskilled
manual workers in manufacturing were the
dominant social and political force in the 20th
century, knowledge technologists are likely to
become the dominant social-and perhaps also
political-force over the next decades. -- "The
next society" Economist.com (November 2001)

I want to know what good is a Web

search engine that returns
324,909,188 "matches" to my
keyword. That's like saying, "Good
news, we've located the product you
want. It's on Earth."

ICT sector performance

Access
Uppermiddleincome
group

Malaysia

East
Asia &
Pacific
Region

2000

2004

2004

2004

Telephone main lines (per 1,000 people)

199

176

220

194

Mobile subscribers (per 1,000 people)

220

573

490

248

95

96

84

73

214

392

133

75

Personal computers (per 1,000 people)

95

170

99

37

Households with television (%)

84

98

92

80

Population covered by mobile telephony (%)

Internet users (per 1,000 people)