Here's some notes from the workshop on "Digital Smart in Global Times. Economic Frameworks for IT Development".
Notes contributed by our friend Boris Chow. Thanks for the help Boris.
Speaker: Sheila Robinson, Managing Director, Solvebrand Limited and Amtek UK Ltd. (UK)
Socially responsible uses of technologies.
Economic business development.
We have a responsibility in how we choose to take creativity and technology forward. Creativity as a product of the imagination.
Focuses on global economic development.
Believes that most innovation happen in smaller organisations and it's the larger organisations that are looking to buy these small organisations.
"Only business executives can ensure the scalability of new approaches." CK Prahalad
Challenges in globalizing economic growth. Such as corporations are seeing different revolutions amoung employees... they don't want to work 24/7.
Used African farmers as an example of what access to applicable technology can do. Experimented with giving farmers mobile phones that allowed them to access a sites that gave them the best market price and over the last 2 years this helped those farmers to increase profitability by 25%. This proves that it's working... people just need access to the right technologies.
Discusses opening our eyes to possible markets. Example of the Jamster kicking U2 from number 1 with a ring tone. What they discovered is that kids are more likely to pay for a ringtone, than pay for a music track. So "we have to be careful when we say that we can't find a market". They are everywhere. We just need to make the connections with those markets and innovative technology to create economic growth.