Worldwide, The Rate of Technological Adoption is Accelerating. That’s Very Mixed News.

Worldwide, The Rate of Technological Adoption is Accelerating. That’s Very Mixed News.

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James Manyika, director at the McKinsey Global Institute, explains that technology isn't just for rich countries anymore. Smartphones, Internet connections, and other forms of exponential technology have become pervasive at an absolutely unprecedented rate. While mostly a positive change, with this transition comes the possibility of unforeseen economic consequences, in particular with regard to how difficult it will be for local companies to compete with international juggernauts. Dr. Manyika's latest book is No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Global Forces Breaking All the Trends..

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JAMES MANYIKA:

Dr. James Manyika is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company’s business and economics research arm, and one of its three global co-leaders. He is a member of the US President’s Global Development Council and in 2013 was appointed by President Obama to serve as the Vice Chairman of the Council. In 2011, Manyika was appointed by the US Secretary of Commerce to serve on a national Innovation Advisory Board, as part of the Competes ACT.

Manyika also serves on the boards of the Aspen Institute, the Oxford Internet Institute, UC Berkeley’s School of Information (iSchool), Harvard’s Hutchins Center, including the Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, the World Affairs Council, and Techonomy. Manyika is a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Bretton Woods Committee.

Prior to McKinsey, Manyika was on the engineering faculty at Oxford University and a fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University, a visiting scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and a faculty exchange fellow at MIT. A Rhodes Scholar, Manyika has served on the California Rhodes selection committee, and is involved with several philanthropic and arts organizations, and innovation forums, including AFRON (African Robotics Network). Born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe, Manyika lives in San Francisco.

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TRANSCRIPT:

James Manyika: Technology is no longer something that’s just restricted to large companies or large countries or even rich countries. So everywhere on the planet now has access, you know, at least it has the potential to have access to technology. People in developing economies often own smartphones and technologies at equivalent rates to people in the developed world. In fact, quite often they’ll have that before they even have sanitation in some cases. So the pervasive nature of technology is one of the most important features of it. The other important feature is just the rate and pace at which adoption is actually occurring. Just to put some comparative numbers on this: If you think about television, it took something like 38 years before television penetration got to the first 50 million people. It took Twitter nine months. So just the rate in acceleration in which adoption occurs is pretty phenomenal. And then the other feature that becomes very interesting about technology is not just its pace and scale and the rate of innovation, but the economic aspects of technology.

So when you have things in digital form, that actually has a profound impact on how it affects the economics of things. So digital technologies have this feature that economists think of it as the non-rivalry, non-excludability of it. And what that means is that my use of something that’s a digital form doesn’t necessarily as a physical technological matter preclude your use of it. The good news about that is that from a user standpoint, this is all good because that’s what economists talk about is consumer surplus.....

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