Innovation and the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies

While exploitation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) is critical to building the Knowledge Economy, many of the challenges being faced today are human-centric rather than technological in nature. Never has it been more important to share knowledge and experience, not just between individuals and within departments, but also increasingly between organizations and across cultural as well as geographic borders. Innovation is increasingly driven by collaboration between different stakeholders sharing complementary expertise, skills and experiences to address commercial and societal requirements that would be very difficult to address alone. Standardization, interoperability, and trusted networks have never been more important in enabling seamless collaboration. Building a truly global Knowledge Economy requires ever-greater transparency of public and private initiatives, whether commercial, legislative, political, social or technical in nature.
Bridging the Digital Divide requires a willingness to share successes and failures, providing an opportunity to replicate successful implementations, avoid previous mistakes and apply scarce resources to adapting lessons learnt to cultural and regional requirements. Sharing such knowledge highlights that problems experienced or exploitation lessons learnt in one domain or location are often directly relevant or applicable to eAdoption elsewhere. This book brings together a comprehensive collection of over 220 contributions on commercial, government or societal exploitation of the Internet and ICT, representing cutting edge research and practical eAdoption from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.