Information Communication Technologies and Emerging Business Strategies

This book started as a collaborative survey to examine and compare communication technology in three organisations. It was then extended to include researchers and practitioners who were looking at the relationships among existing firms, markets and consumers worldwide. The resulting papers focus on the wide and rapid diffusion of the use of various media such as e‐mail, mobile phones, the internet, interactive TV, games and web blogs, and the way they have affected human and business communications. The four sections of this book try to pull these themes together.

Section 1 (Innovation, communication technologies and consumer clusters) starts with a report on the development, marketing and use of wireless technology, its application worldwide and the knowledge space it creates. Two further papers comment on the Japanese scene, how Japan markets digital products to consumer groups – otaku and kogal, and their effect on the production side of technology. What is of particular interest is the part that women have played in creating mass market diffusion of mobile camera phones and picture mail services.

Section 2 (Commerce, community and consumer‐generated content) deals with the interactive and social nature of massive multiplayer online games which may be unfamiliar to many of us. It is a knowledge economy product that brings challenges to conventional publishing and legal practice. This is followed by an interesting report on advertising practices in the use of digital games, the development of “advergames” and game designs. The last paper deals with how popular culture functions in the digital age, and on user icons in web‐based blogging.

Section 3 is titled “Creative industries”, and the first paper provides an introduction to the emergence of creativity in contemporary economic, political and social life, plus the characteristics of emerging labour markets in the cultural industries. The motion picture industry is exploring new models in digital distribution, and studying the effect of these changes on media convergence and the online economy. Work on innovations in TV is another growth area, and this section describes what is taking place with the advent of interactive TV and the development of HDTV.

Section 4 (Emerging markets and organisational cultures) reports on the types of partnerships employed to increase internet demand in emerging markets. It also describes ways to improve on distant collaborations using computer chat technologies for virtual team meetings and explores ways of working at home and its possible effects on the work‐family interface. To complete the analysis there is a survey of the penetration of mobile phones and emailing through the internet in five countries.

Overall, the book lacks direction and coherence. Papers are well researched, but are too long and the layout is unhelpful. Bibliographies at the end of each chapter are good value.