KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

The world of 2010 is one in which many featrues of our present world can be found - but made more extreme by the effect of digital technology and electronic networks. people who provide services; people who are excluded; people who commit crime. As with both of the previous industrial revolutions, electronic networks offer the scope for rapid change and the huge potential opportunities which goes with it, but not for everybody. By 2010, the internet will be an all but ubiquitous technology, as electricity was a century ago. Technologycal change will have continued to deliver ever more mobile dvices, and more consumer-oriented devices, coupled with more and cheaper storage. All of these are potential sources of competitive advantage for Europe against the United States. At the same time, technological change will have produced some extreme effects. Privacy will be a battleground, as will ownership of intellectual property. The international nature of networks increase the opportunities to reach new customers in new markets but will also increase ideological competition between competing cultural, religious, and business models - the continuation of a trend which has accelerated ever since a boxer called Cassius Clay renamed himself Muhammed Ali. For business this poses particular challenges. Already businesses understand that internet businesses move at a faster pace. More fundamentally, it also opens up new sources of competition around business models. The internet enables entrepreneurs to rewrite the traditional rules within a framework that both reduces transaction costs and gives unprecedented access to customers. The new flexibility this creates could transform the scale the distinction between business-to-business and business-to-consumer propositions. At the same time, the notion that the internet offers 'friction-free capitalism'may only be a euphemism for profitless. So far most of the impact of the internet on business has been to improve existing processes. The next stage will be to redraw them. Business people will have to examine their own industries with the fresh eyes of outsiders. When they do this they will find that there are a number of sources of competitive advantage: ·Customer relationships ·Innovation ·Business architecture Some of the British economy's traditional strengths, for example in the creative industries and in financial services. should stand it in good stead in exploiting these. However, if Britain is to achieve its potential in this world it will require us to connect together a combination of skills and some attitude. In this it will need to confront some deep-rooted and traditional assumptions and behaviour patterns. ·The confident society needs to embrace diversity and celebrate risk, while encouraging openness, not just of software and standards. Sucess in the online world needs to be matched by a strong sense of physical place and cultural confidence in the tangible world. ·The energised economy needs to support the development of skills and to connect them together through effective geographically-based clusters. The financial markets need to value entrepreneurship while the tax system needs to ensure that successful risk-takers are rewarded appropriately. ·The active consumer is essential to the success of emerging businesses, because they create better products and services and higher standards. Such consumers need to be savvy enough to assess the trade-offs they will be offered in the online world between price and risk, between different levels of trust and privacy. ·finally, only a government which is fully immersed in the online world at all levels can understand it sufficiently as it evolves to act appropriately to enable its development.