How much does broadband really matter in developing a competitive and innovative modern economy? A corporate lunch with US software company NetApp last week illustrated that there’s more to creating a successful digital society than just rolling out fibre connections.
Rich Scurfield, NetApp’s Senior Vice President responsible for the Asia-Pacific was outlining the firm’s plans for the Australian market and how it fits into the broader jigsaw puzzle of economies across the region.
Like many companies in the China market NetApp is finding it hard with Scurfield describing the market as “chaotic”. This isn’t unusual for western technology companies and Apple is one of the few to have had substantial success.
Across the rest of East Asia, Scurfield sees them ranging as being mature, stable and settled in the cases of Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand through to India where the opportunities and the challenges of connecting a billion people are immense.
Digital outliers
The interesting outlier is South Korea, one of the most connected nations in the world, where the promise of ubiquitous broadband isn’t delivering the expected economic benefits to the entire community.
In theory, South Korea should be seeing a boom in connected small businesses. As Scurfield says, “from a technology providers’ view this connectivity means you could do more things very differently because of the infrastructure that’s available.”
Global Innovation Rankings
Korea’s underperformance is illustrated by last year’s Global Innovation Index that saw South Korea coming in at 16th, just ahead of both Australia and New Zealand whose broadband rollouts are nowhere near as advanced as the ROK’s.
Making a close comparison of Australia and the Republic of Korea’s strengths in the WIPO innovation index, it’s clear the technology and engineering aspects are just part of a far more complex set of factors such as confidence in institutions, the ease of doing business and even freedom of the press.
Putting those factors together makes a country far more likely to encourage its population to start new innovative businesses that can compete globally. When you have a small group of chaebol dominating the private sector then it’s much harder for new entrants to enter the market – interestingly a private sector dominated by big conglomerates is a problem Australia shares.
Small business laggards
NetApp’s Scurfield flagged exactly this problem, “Korea is an interesting market in there’s about six companies that matter and from a competitive view those companies are extremely advanced, they have great technology and great people.”
“However what’s not happening across the rest of the country is this adoption isn’t bleeding into the broader community,” said Scurfield “Because of that I don’t see broadband connectivity as having a wide impact.”
That Korean small and medium businesses aren’t using broadband technologies to develop innovative new products and service in one of the most connected economies on earth raises a question about just how effective investment in infrastructure is when it’s faced with cultural barriers.
Certainly we should be keeping in mind that economic development, global competitiveness and the creation of industry hubs is as much a matter of people, national institutions and culture as it is of technology.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the importance of our people and institutions when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a nation in today’s connected world.