Tag Archives: high-tech

Entrepreneurs Cash in on Global IT Demands

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Salim Ghauri is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26-27, 2010, from countries with sizeable Muslim populations. Ghauri is chief executive of NetSol Tech Ltd. Pakistan, President of Asia Pacific for U.S. based NetSol Technologies Inc., and Honorary Consul of Australia for Punjab, Pakistan.

Ron Hira, a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is an expert on the intersection of technology and economic policy.

Salim Ghauri

Salim Ghauri

Salim Ghauri:
The upcoming entrepreneurship summit in Washington – to which President Obama invited business owners from countries with sizeable Muslim populations – will create opportunities.

This summit will highlight the challenges and opportunities for entrepreneurs extending their businesses to the U.S. market. It will be an opportunity to further business cooperation between business hubs in countries with sizeable Muslim communities and the USA.

While the potential is great, it will be challenging to identify business sectors and markets that offer the greatest potential. Information technology will be one, as is already clear from the phenomenal growth of business-process outsourcing and information-technology outsourcing between firms in the USA and in developing countries. The USA constitutes a huge and lucrative market for winning IT business by entrepreneurs in Muslim-majority countries, and there is growing IT talent in the Muslim world.

Investing in IT export-driven growth will also catalyze socioeconomic development in the Muslim world, which comprises countries with large populations and limited domestic opportunities. Traditional domestic industries remain inefficient, and their employment generation capability limited. IT, on the other hand, can extend opportunities to even the most underrepresented sections of the society in such countries, including women, the handicapped and those living in rural and underserved areas.

Ron Hira

Ron Hira

Ron Hira:
The opportunities for offshore outsourcing — using high-skilled workers in low-cost countries to service customers in the USA — will continue to grow. We aren’t anywhere near the point of saturation as businesses look for ways to become more efficient. New tasks and sectors are becoming ripe for the outsourcing.

U.S. business customers are searching for ways to diversify the geographies of their supplier locations, offering opportunities to new companies and countries poised to take advantage. And U.S. businesses have become adept at managing across geographic boundaries, making “off-shoring” attractive.

To win outsourcing contracts in information technology, business processes, and knowledge processes, learn from India, the leading outsourcing destination country:

- It delivers beyond expectations in quality and price. Indian firms meet the highest quality standards in software production, something called CMM Level 5;
- It has solid infrastructure. Reliable high-speed communications is pre-requisite. India’s software technology parks serve as a model;
- Its government helps. India provides a tax holiday for domestic and foreign multinational firms for any exports;
- Its national trade body is strong. NASSCOM, India’s IT trade body, has done a masterful job in marketing offshore outsourcing in general and India’s firms in particular.
- Indian firms have good workforce training programs.

Outsourcing has been a boon to India’s economy and is part of its national sense of pride. And outsourcing has boosted other economic sectors in India.

While the outsourcing of American jobs remains controversial in the USA, it has become routine, and politicians have effectively ignored the concerns of American workers when it comes to off-shoring. It is unlikely that changes in American policy would be adverse to off-shoring.

If Silicon Valley is High-Tech Heaven, Are Some Biz Clusters in Hell?

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Silicon Valley generally is viewed as the epitome of pure private sector entrepreneurship, worth propagating in other places.

Yet, in the early years, the U.S. government helped to lay a foundation for this cluster of innovative startups and the venture capital funds supporting them, according to the recent book [add italics] Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Josh Lerner.

Many governments promote high-tech business because countries and localities that fail to make relevant investment often lag in innovation, business formation and economic growth.

Research parks or science parks combined with business incubators have multiplied around the world with the aim of commercializing advanced-technology ideas coming from universities and research institutes.

However, quite a few of these efforts fail because they are either misguided from their very conception or don’t take cues from the market.

As the character of science, entrepreneurship, technology and business changes, so must government programs designed to support high-tech entrepreneurship. Nobody knows yet where the evolution will take the now prevailing model of research parks/incubators. But those countries, regions, cities, universities, venture funds and potential entrepreneurs that embrace the change and try to make the best of it will benefit.

America.gov will publish in March a feature Web page related to these issues.

And to preview the topic, we have invited officials, experts, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from around the world to blog on what makes relevant government-supported schemes work and what will be the shape of high-tech entrepreneurship that emerges in the future from the interplay of governments, venture funds, universities, researchers and entrepreneurs. Please join the discussion.

IT Services Look for Better Grades in Ghana

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[guest name="Kobbina Awuah, Herman Nyamunga and Imran Qidwai" biography="Kobbina Awuah is from Ghana and lives in Ithaca, New York. He recently earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering at Cornell University and works at the energy company ConocoPhillips. Responding to his idea are Herman Nyamunga, an independent development consultant and blogger who lives in Philadelphia, and Imran Qidwai, president of Zaviah, a high tech consultancy based in Boston."]

America.gov asked finalists from among the more than 700 African immigrants who submitted business plans to the “African Diaspora Marketplace” to blog about their ideas. Sponsored by USAID and Western Union Company, the African Diaspora Marketplace is a contest that will award seed money to approximately 15 winners to help them bring their ideas to life in their home countries.

KOBBINA AWUAH, entrepreneur:

Kobbina Awuah, with student

Kobbina Awuah, in yellow shirt, works with a student.

The local primary school student (pictured with me) was one of the first visitors to a computer center I helped to establish for a non-governmental project in Bimbila, Ghana. Like most African youth, he possessed an eagerness to use the facility. It was one more proof that my business venture – Peak INFOTEK, a publishing and IT firm – is badly needed. My company aims to establish state-of-the-art computer labs and learning centers for faculty and students at Ghanaian universities. The labs and centers will be equipped with PCs connected to the Internet, educational software programs, printers and copiers. Registered users will be able to use some services via a dedicated website in their homes or dorms.

In 2007, while conducting research at Ghanaian universities on IT services, I realized that they have been lagging. The universities lack computer centers with Internet access, and students frequently have to wait in long lines to have access to copiers and printers, which are often located in the open.

I have put together a strong management team in Ghana. They have since conducted extensive market studies, which have enabled Peak INFOTEK to develop several innovative solutions. We will be launching our first IT facility in Kumasi in February 2010.

HERMAN NYAMUNGA, business expert:

In Ghana, students often wait in long lines to use copier machines.

In Ghana, students wait in long lines to use copiers.

This is a good business venture with potential to improve learning through exchange of ideas, research, and increased communication. Students will be able to access external resources to help in research and other academic projects. Most students in Africa lag behind in studies due to lack of access to quality learning resources. This facility will help to ease that problem. It will provide the students with unlimited Internet access for research and allow them to print and present their class work. Faxes will facilitate faster transmission of documents. Copiers, which are critical at African universities, will increase access to textbooks whose numbers are limited.

Universities could also use Peak InfoTek computer centers to offer online classes to reduce classroom congestion.

The challenges I see with this business model include the issue of affordability: are there enough people who can afford the venture’s services to generate a profit? Another challenge is that many students in Africa are not computer literate, so in order to increase access, you must deal with that problem too.

IMRAN QIDWAI, business expert:

As we all know, the Internet has significantly changed human lives in the past 15 years. However, it is unfortunate that large numbers of people in the developing world still lack access to computers. Anything that can help speed up and ease the access to computing resources will be phenomenal in helping the university students reach their potential.

One key to long-term success will be to make these centers sustainable, with locals trained to maintain the systems in fully operational optimum conditions. The long-term strategy should also include plans to take similar computer access and education to primary and secondary schools, so that children can start learning computer skills earlier to take advantage of the wealth of information available on the Internet.