The Next Generation Digital Challenge awards 2013 programme is being supported by Go ON UK.
Go ON UK’s aim is to is to make the UK the most digitally capable nation in the world – and by sponsoring this awards programme they are turning the spotlight on the demand for new skills and expertise.
The Open Call for nominations closes on 30th April.
Full story here with details of how to nominate a contender.
Way back in the 1950’s the long slog of completing the great UK-wide changeover from AC to DC electricity was at last completed. It was of no great surprise that the last houses to be welcomed into that modern era were in the poorest and must run-down areas of of our cities.
In the 1970’s North Sea Gas conversions were still edging their way towards completion – and as with all such great infrastructure projects it was only with conversion of the remote ends of the network that the full benefits could be realised. Such is the nature of long term investments. Short-term patches and temporary fixes do not answer.
Right now, with the transformation of the entire economy, we are only beginning to understand the length of the long tail – a challenge that does not have a clear beginning and end because the pace of digital developments often runs faster than our efforts to catch up.
The report from the National Audit Office on the UK government’s ‘Digital by Default’ design for public services is a timely reminder that we have a long way to go – particularly for those who are most in need of public services.
This story will, inevitably, run and run.
For the first time in 10 years the FTTH Council Europe annual summit arrived in the UK.
I was only able to attend on the first day and a half but my observations are around the growing gulf between between economies who chose to be fully part of the global digital economy and those who merely aspire to ‘get by’.
The full story is at the main Groupe Intellex archive site here.
For our 2013 edition we have changed the design – starting with an Open Call for entries, suggestions and ideas.
The Challenge will this year honour and celebrate the enablers of your own digital economy.
We are also this year introducing a separate ‘smart city’ track for international exemplars.
The full details and how to throw in your suggestions can be found here.
Nominate Now and track how your contenders fare during the short-list selection, finalist places and the winners at the NextGen13 conference dinner on 14th October.
The Digital Challenge is a Groupe Intellex project in association with NG Events Ltd.
A new study jointly commissioned by INTUG (the international user group for major telecoms customers) and ECTA (European Competitive Telecoms Association) estimates that the value of a single digital market in the EU for digital communications services as €90 billion.
The need for regulators to address the issues of easier cross-border service provision to enable efficiencies for major businesses has become a significant challenge as the digital economy develops.
Major businesses may represent only 2% of all EU companies but these multi-site, multinational organisations generate 60 million jobs and account for nearly half of EU business turnover and more than half of ‘value added’.
Together with public service agencies, businesses contribute disproportionally to the revenues of major telcos and, in their remit for protecting the interests of all customers, regulators should be mindful of the market distortions that flow from this ‘indirect taxation’.
You can find the full story and a link to the INTUG-ECTA study at Bdaily – the UK’s business news network.
In the UK the number of citizens on the wrong side of the digital divide may have been more than halved over the last 5 years but that still leaves a vast number who are about to find that, in the cause of cheaper, more-efficient and sometimes better public services, the government’s ‘digital by default’ policy will soon start to hit home.
Moreover, of those citizens who are not currently online-enabled (with neither the connectivity nor the skills) the majority are those for whom easier access to public services, cheaper living, access to jobs, less hassle, better healthcare and education are high priorities.
Tackling the challenges of the ‘doubly disconnected’ (economically and socially disconnected citizens) are 15,000 volunteers led by Helen Milner’s UK Online Centres Foundation. Together they are delivering vast benefits – for the life chances of individuals and, economically, for all of us.
We thought it timely to update our story from 2007. Read Helen’s account of the continuing need for greater digital inclusion in her report for Groupe Intellex ‘The scale of digital exclusion in the UK‘
Yesterday’s demise of the UK’s Blockbuster video store, coming so soon after the reins of HMV were handed to ‘the administrator’ and Jessop’s cameras followed Comet’s white goods and countless card shops into the wilderness, has kept headline and leader writers busy and caused ‘a nation of shopkeepers’ to pause for thought.
It was, said one columnist (overstating for effect), as if the High Street had finally run out of people who were not on the Internet. We might even see the end of that most unlikely quack health treatment – retail therapy. The outpouring of late love for lost brands stands in contrast to the reluctance of shoppers to visit the places before they died – and a good part of that must reflect the lack of money to splurge on optional extras when they can be found more conveniently and cheaper elsewhere. Economists may describe this as ‘market pruning’ but hopes for a resurgence of growth in the Spring seem unlikely.
No amount of yearning for the real or imagined lost paradise of the High Street will slow the world sufficiently for those who want to get off but there is value to be found in this massive penny-dropping moment – the realisation that the digital economy is real. Personal and collective moments of revelation such as this tell us how much we have been kidding ourselves as we cling to the ‘established order’.
In the UK the retail sector employs 4 million people and whilst feeling for those whose lives careers and incomes have been disrupted, our editorial ‘Pennies, Drops and Impacts‘ looks at the urgent need to get all our heads around the new realities and deliver a digitally inclusive and more-equitable society.
This edition of the index shows that our published output may have been lower in the 2nd half of the year but we developed some digital economy themes in greater depth.
The Index provides quick links to all of our editorial material (including contributions from Marit Hendriks and Andrew Macdonald and Leader columns for the CMA) plus briefing notes for projects for NG Events and Community Study Tours.
Surprisingly popular in the last week of the year was a review of Irene Ng’s new book ‘Value & Worth’ with a hit–rate exceeding anything we’d published since last September.
For Irene Ng’s new book the title of our review, ‘Make of it what you will’, captures the sense of empowerment that is so evident in the digital economy.
This is an economy where the consumer plays a huge role in how products and services are used to create value. It is an economy where suppliers must rethink their propositions.
In our increasingly digitally-enabled economy it is no longer sufficient for businesses to see sales of a product or service as their sole objective. The value seen by the consumer will be co-created in combination with an array of services and digital devices and further conditioned by the context in which they are being used.
The author does not hide her academic credentials (including a Professorial Chair at Warwick University) but it is her pre-academic business experience that is evident throughout. The challenges of creating and sustaining new markets will be fought in an intensely competitive arena – and one where the platforms for value co-creation are often beyond the influence of second-order supplicants.
Many business leaders will respond to these challenges with innovative creativity and startling success. This week’s report from the GDS shows very clearly that the government is taking a lead. Others may not be so responsive. The world will move on and the disruption to the established order of things will be devastating for those who do not see or fully understand the changes that are already upon us.
This an explorer’s handbook as we venture into the digital unknown.
More at the Sunday Breakfast Book Review
See also our Business Advisory note at Bdaily – the UK business news network
Those who doubted the findings in 2009 of Wilkinson and Pickett’s ‘The Spirit Level’ may care to revisit the subject of equality in the light of the recent report from Boston Consulting Group.
In BCG’s ‘Sustainable Economic Development Assessment’ we have new methodologies and data for assessing the quality of GDP growth – the extent to which wealth is converted into well-being.
It turns out that countries with high rates of growth are not necessarily able to convert that into societal development whereas other less-GDP-impressive countries seem to have far better mechanisms for raising living standards.
Why should this matter when we seem to have little or no growth? This study arrives at a time when people are drawing lessons from recessionary times and, in facing up to the creative disruptions of the digital economy, are more than ever beginning to appreciate the real role of infrastructure in enabling both wealth and wellbeing.
Full story here
Groupe Intellex 