In a recent study by McKinsey Quarterly Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity, they find a dramatic surge in the influence of the internet on commerce and the global economy.
Their findings as follows (including charts):
-The Internet accounts for 3.4 percent of overall GDP in the 13 nations studied. More than half of that impact arises from private consumption, primarily online purchases and advertising. An additional 29 percent flows from investments by private-sector companies in servers, software, and communications equipment. The Internet economy, now larger than that of Spain, surpasses global industry sectors such as agriculture and energy.
-The Internet is a critical element of economic progress, pushing a significant portion of economic growth. Both our macroeconomic approach and our statistical approach show that in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10 percent of GDP over the 15-year period from 1995 to 2009, and its influence is expanding. Over the last five years of that period, its contribution to GDP growth in these countries doubled, to 21 percent. If we look at the 13 countries in our scope, the Internet contributed 7 percent of growth from 1995 to 2009 and 11 percent from 2004 to 2009. In the global Net's growing ecosystem of suppliers, US companies play leading roles in key sectors. China and India rank among the fast-growing players in the Internet's global supply chain.
-Most of the economic value the Internet creates falls outside of the technology sector: companies in more traditional industries capture 75 percent of the benefits. The Internet is also a catalyst for generating jobs. Among 4,800 small and midsize enterprises surveyed, it created 2.6 of them for each lost to technology-related efficiencies.
Bottom line:
The web’s dramatic usage explosion is being reflected on the global economy. Real time connectivity has translated to vastly expanding economic value added and to immense productivity growth.
Increasing specialization could be part of the current dislocations that has led to lofty unemployment levels.
Yet those who see the world in terms of the industrial age will get things so awfully wrong.
As Alvin Toffler writes in the Revolutionary Wealth (p.12),
The developments in capital tools for knowledge expansion are like a rocket in a fueling stage, preparing to launch us toward the next phase of wealth creation. That next phase will spread the new wealth system more widely across the world.
A revolution is under way. And the challenge arising with it will challenge everything we thought we knew about wealth.
No comments:
Post a Comment