The New ICT Ecosystem Implications for Policy and Regulation

An award-winning book that develops the idea of the ICT sector as an evolving ecosystem.

The ICT sector is crucial as a driver of economic and social growth. Not only is it an important industry in its own right, but it also provides the communication and infrastructure without which modern economies could not function. How does this sector work? Why is it stronger in some countries than in others? What should companies, governments and regulators be doing to enhance its contribution? In The New ICT Ecosystem, Martin Fransman answers these and other questions by developing the idea of the ICT sector as an evolving ecosystem. He shows that some components of the ICT ecosystem, particularly the innovation process, work better in some countries and regions than in others. For example, the Internet content and applications layer of the ecosystem tends to work better in the US than in Europe or Asia. The analysis in this book enables policy makers and regulators to understand why some parts of the ICT ecosystem are underperforming and what can be done to enhance their performance. The previous edition of The New ICT Ecosystem won the 2008–10 Joseph Schumpeter Prize.

List of exhibits; Preface; Introduction; 1. Summary of the argument; 2. The new ICT ecosystem; 3. The new ICT ecosystem as an innovation system; 4. The new ICT ecosystem: a quantitative analysis; 5. Telecoms regulation; 6. Policy-making for the new ICT ecosystem; 7. The way forward: the message to policy-makers and regulators; Appendix 1. The evolution of the new ICT ecosystem, 1945–2007: how innovation drives the system; Appendix 2. European regulation of electronic communications, 1987–2003; Appendix 3. Some problems with the dominant regulatory paradigm in telecoms (DRPT); Appendix 4. A short introduction to Schumpeterian evolutionary economics; Appendix 5. Other layer models: OSI and TCP/IP; Appendix 6. Content, applications and services - definitions; Appendix 7. Why do the US internet companies dominate in layer 3?; Appendix 8. How did East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China) become so strong in layer 1?; Appendix 9. China's telecoms service providers in layer 2; Appendix 10. Companies in our database by layer; Bibliography; Index.

This award-winning book develops the idea of the ICT sector as an evolving ecosystem and shows how it works better in some countries and regions than in others. This allows readers to understand why some parts of this system are underperforming and what can be done to enhance their performance.

Martin Fransman is Professor of Economics and Founder-Director of the Institute for Japanese-European Technology Studies in the School of Business and Economics at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely in the fields of innovation and competitiveness. His books include Global Broadband Battles: Why the US and Europe Lag While Asia Leads (2006), Telecoms in the Internet Age: From Boom to Bust to…? (2002), Visions of Innovation: The Firm and Japan (1999), Japan's Computer and Communications Industry: The Evolution of Industrial Giants and Global Competitiveness (1995) and The Market and Beyond: Information Technology in Japan (1990).