e-ISEA Open Web

The ICT Event in Lyon finished last thursday 27th November with another great success in terms of participation, about 4,500 delegates were registered in this years edition. The event was divided into three types of activities: panel discussions and keynotes within the conference track, networking sessions and the exhibition. What follows is a summary of the main keynotes and panels sessions where I was present.

To begin with, it is worth mentioning the “High Level Plenary” that took place in the morning session on the 25th. In a session chaired by the Commissioner Viviane Reding, Ben Verwaayen (CEO Alcatel-Lucent), Harold goddjin (CEO TomTom), Esko Aho (Former Finland Prime Minister) and Michel Cosnard (CEO INRIA) discussed about the ICT agenda for the next decade. Each panelist showed his preference for the ICT agenda but there were some common points that should highlighted.

All the participants agreed on the globality of market and the importance of business models. A company operating in a global playfiled should provide global solutions, the real challenge are global markets not local ones. As a CEO from a company that started with 3 employees, Harold Goddijn is aware of the hard part of the business: selling the products or services. For that purpose, he stressed the need to build a brand around a firm in order to position within the market; technology is important but the business model is much more. In the case of TomTom, they have spent much more money on marketing than on technology last years.

But, how are new activities launched into the market, do we still have entrepreneurs in Europe? This question was answered by Esko Aho, who compared Europe’s situation with the one in the United States (by far, the object of every comparison in terms of research and entrepreneurship during the conference) with Europe lagging slightly behind in terms of entrepreneurship but far behind in innovation. Aho mentioned two main urgent needs: market creation and understanding the role of risks, without risk taking you cannot create new products or services and Europe is really weak in this aspect. Business angels‘ role and venture funding are substantial for creating opportunities for risks taking.

Among other key strategic areas for a future ICT agenda green ICT, increased productivity, collaborative Internet, knowledge driven society, information communication facilities in the future internet, security and reliability of information systems, modelling and simulation of large-scale systems and other issues were mentioned, but with so many issues, from which should we start?

Of course, there is no single answer to the previous question but it is obvious that the main stream of research within the ICT world for the future years is the Future Internet. Similar initiatives have been launched in USA (GENI and FIND programmes funded by the National Science Foundation) and Japan (AKARI Project) and Europe has funded a first wave of research projects in this area within the FP7 programme. In this sense, two consecutive sessions on the Future Internet were scheduled: the first one directed towards new business opportunities and the second one to new services for citizens.

Among the speakers of the first session, chaired by Giovanni Colombo (Former CTO, Telecomitalia), I particularly liked Niklas Savander’s (NOKIA) speech around what he called the “context-driven Internet”, the business opportunities around it and the opportunity for Europe to take the lead in this new Internet. He pointed out obvious issues like the success of the participatory Web 2.0 phenomenom but the lack of sustainability of its business model (nobody is making money with Web 2.0).

He defined the four dimensions that form the concept of context: what, where, when and who. As for NOKIA, the contextual Web opens a completely new business based on transactions, subscriptions and advertising; ad-based business models are not enough, people are willing to pay for services he named in the afternoon session as “get me somewhere” (e.g.: car navigation, pedestrian navigation), “get me someone” (e.g. mobile phones, social networks) and “get me over my boredom” (e.g.: consumption of media). In view of this new scenario, Niklas also proposed a set of guidelines for the private and public sectors to capitalize this opportunity. First of all, he pointed out the need for “speed”, that is, focus on implementation first and standardization later, this goes for both private and public sectors.

With regard to the private sector he suggested to:

1. Foster opennes in order to get the innovation we need in Europe and grasp the opportunity bridge the gap with the United States, who actually leads the Internet.
2. Focus on usability and visibility of where consumer data is stored as the Internet is becoming mainstream.

The next generation Internet is a social phenomemon, not a technological one and hence the interplay between the public and private sector is essential. So, what can the public sector do?

1. Provide the right educational framework. Is Europe providing enough good software engineers? The difference between a bad programmer and a good programmer is about a 40% fall in productivity. What really matters is how good an engineer is, not how much it costs.
2. Prepare to address personal information and privacy issues. This issues are crucial in order to achieve transparency and consumer trust.
3. Support entrepreneurial activity. The Web is about entrepreneurship and new companies starting in garages, many of them failing but some of them succeeding. In this sense, Europe’s framework for entrepreneurship is really behind USA in terms of appreciation of failure.

To sum up, it is obvious that the Future Internet will be an strategic research area for the coming years in Europe. There will be technical issues like semantic technologies, ubiquous access, 3D media, virtual worlds or network infrastructures but above all the Future Internet will be a social phenomenon. This implies the collaboration between the public and the private sector to establish new policies in two main areas: entrepreneurship and privacy. These aspects are essential if Europe wants to become a driver of the new Internet phenomenom and not remain as a passive observer.