Last week, I had the privilege to be invited to the eG8 in Paris, one of the largest and most elite high-tech gatherings of the year. CEOs from France Telecom, Google, Facebook, Vivendi, NYT, etc. etc. were in attendance… simply put, the only tech-star missing was Apple! The objective of the forum was, as French President Sarkozy said, to “use attendees expertise to help reinforce democracy, solidarity and social dialogue,” and define ”a basic minimum of values and rules agreed at the world level.” Stemming from this ambitious agenda, many high-quality summaries and commentaries were posted online, especially those written by Harvard Business Review and O’Reilly blog.
Apart from this very ambitious and controversial agenda, my personal objective was to see how a young entrepreneur, with a freshly launched company, can accelerate success thanks to strategies learned at eG8.
1- The Time is right! Enormous growth is still possible for those who innovate.
One of the most insightful documents released during eG8 was this great report from McKinsey, which finally shed light on the role of internet in the economy of 13 key Western and Asian countries. In these countries, the internet economy accounts for 3.4% of GDP, and most interestingly, contributed to 21% of GDP growth in the past 5 years. In other words, innovation fuels growth. We all believe it, but now the there is proof. While many large corporations and governments have been skeptical regarding this economic potential, hopefully this news will accelerate novel reforms that support web innovation.
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