Continued….

In any economic revolution, centres of excellence are established which eventually become huge generators of wealth in their own right. The government can be responsible only for providing the right soil for such flowers to grow, but if it provides the soil then these flowers will definitely grow. So the government begins by helping to disseminate knowledge and then needs to move forward by enabling the use of technology and by enabling the funding of start-up companies.

Companies respond by taking advantage of what is provided and developing successful businesses that can exploit the technology. Thus understanding develops and a virtuous circle is formed. If the government persists in this, then eventually the economic region will become a generator of technology in its own right. We have begun to see this happen in some areas of the world. Israel, Eire and India are good examples.
Until recently North America completely dominated the IT industry, but the Internet has changed a whole series of economic factors and now many other areas are favoured in various ways. Now in particular, countries that have good education systems and hence produce skilled workers have an added advantage.

Spain is in a very interesting position because Spanish is the second most common language in the world with hundreds of millions speaking it. Hence the potential Internet market based on Spanish culture is very large. Many English speaking companies will not see or even think of the potential this market has.
Beyond spreading knowledge, and enabling technology and finance, the only other thing that government can do is to encourage links between the education system and the commercial world so that the right skills are being produced amongst the young. Taken together these are the areas where help needs to be targeted.

Q: What would you like the people, who are going to attend the presentation that you are going to give at the II International Walqa E-business Meeting, New challenges for the 21st Century, which will be held in Zaragoza on 26 and 27 September, to make of all of this?

RB: We need to understand that we were born into a time of change. In my opinion the rate of technology change that is occurring cannot go much faster than it is currently doing and also there are very definite limits as to how far it can go. What is happening will not go on forever – in fact, perhaps no more than another 20 to 30 years.

There are a few things that we need to understand about what these changes bring and how they affect us. At the E-business meeting I intend to provide the audience with as much information as I can to help them see how things happen and to help them predict themselves where all this will lead. Of course, this is very ambitious of me, but if I manage to get a few people to understand a few things I will be pleased.

What I would also like the audience to come to understand is that it is not necessary to be afraid of any of this. In the near future at least, new technology is going to create new opportunities. Those who cannot prosper will be those who close their minds to it.

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