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16 - Global implications of information and communication technologies (ICT)

from Part III - Managing risk and uncertainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2010

Arnoud De Meyer
Affiliation:
Insead
Hubert Gatignon
Affiliation:
INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
John R. Kimberly
Affiliation:
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Robert E. Gunther
Affiliation:
Gunther Communications
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Summary

The emergence of new information and communication technologies (ICT) has created opportunities for changing business models and rapidly developing service innovations. In this chapter, the author examines the typical process of the emergence of new technologies – from improving the efficiency and quality of current operations to enabling a rethinking of products and services offered by the firm. He then explores some of the implications of information and communication technologies for the development of new models for global services. Among the opportunities are the facilitation of “overnight globalization,” creating geographically independent knowledge-based services, making the customer the locus of innovation, and enabling peer-to-peer communities. Finally, he explores the implications of these technologies for the global management of the process of innovation itself.

With about a half-dozen employees in 1997, Celebrity Sightings, a website for fan clubs of teenage stars, could draw together teenagers in chat rooms from Australia, South Africa, Mexico, and the United States. Internet technology allowed the company to violate one of the generally accepted principles of global service businesses: that services do not travel well and are difficult to export. The necessary interaction between the customer and the service provider required the provider to be located where the customer chose to be. International growth in the service industry and internationalization very often required duplication of assets, franchising, or other mechanisms to set up localized operations. This is very expensive and complex, but with the Internet, this internationalization has become technically easy and requires little investment.

Type
Chapter
Information
The INSEAD-Wharton Alliance on Globalizing
Strategies for Building Successful Global Businesses
, pp. 378 - 394
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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