Impact of

ICT Innovations
on Business

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 7 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 re-using
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
Technology
(ICT)
Almost everybody
today believes
that nothing in

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 emailhave 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
Technology
Six stages of ICT
in public sector (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)