European Teletrade Online: OECD Workshop Report 20-21 March 1997

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20 July 1998
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Market Competition and Innovation in the Information Society
Summary of the sixth in a series of OECD workshops on "the economics of the Information Society", held at the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, 20-21 March 1997.
An informal report of the workshop by Ewan Sutherland is online at http://www.lamp.ac.uk/~ewan/reports/oecd97.html.
Purpose
Participation
Topics
Significant issues
Some highlights
ETD perspectives

Purpose
The OECD's aim for the workshops programme has been to develop "economic data, research and analysis", reflecting an OECD view that "there is little consensus of where [information society] developments are (or should be) leading the economy and society. The vagueness of the vision of future outcomes is a result of a paucity of economic theory, analytic methodology, quantitative data and empirical work to provide economic evidence of the ongoing changes." The workshops are expected to lead to improved policy development within OECD and OECD's member states.
The London workshop focused on competition and innovation and the factors affecting them.
Participation
Participants included a wide cross section of interests, including Government departments (for example representatives from the UK trade and industry department, the European Commission, Austrian ministry of telecommunications, Canadian industry department, Finnish finance ministry), specialist "information society" institutions (for example the Korean Information Society Development Insitute); industry (Rank Xerox, Reuters, Deloitte & Touche, and some smaller firms); and academic and commercial researchers and experts from a range of disciplines (including representation from USA, Canada, Italy, Germany, Japan, UK, France, Belgium, Sweden, Slovak Republic, Netherlands, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway, Australia. There was of course a strong delegation from OECD itself.
The European Telework Development Initiative was represented by Horace Mitchell, Programme Director.
Topics
The workshop was run in four main topic sessions, focusing on:
The changing nature of the market; networking and its effect on conduct of industry
Intellectual property rights (IPR) and whether there is a need for changes in IPR management to facilitate innovation and investment
The opportunities and potential for small firms and the market's response to innovative entrepreneurs
Competition and innovation policies - how can governments best promote competition and innovation
There was an introductory session and closing "wrap up" session.
In each session there were formal speakers and papers, followed by remarks from two or more "discussants" and time for open dialogue.
Significant issues
An underlying thread emerged, suggesting that three matters are of special importance:
a focus on "individuals" as much as on organisations
the significance of "human networking" using the leverage of technology, as being at least as important as automated transactions and systems
the idea that governments should focus on creating a healthy climate in which innovation and competition can flourish, rather than seeking to "steer" the market, which is quite widely regarded as impractical
However, these were just the key threads that struck this participant, the range of topics addressed by speakers, discussants and participants was immense and no doubt each participant came away with their own unique perspective on the lessons learned.
Forward to Some highlights from the workshop
Forward to ETD perspectives on the workshop
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