World Economic Forum awards bronze ICT readiness medal to Finland...and some thoughts on "Localization 2.0"

I have not updated this blog for quite a while as most experiences went into facebook...anyway, the current report of the World Economic Forum is a good reason to do so.. As a start: Finland has reached the bronze medal, 3rd place just behind Sweden and Singapore...but the details are much more interesting: http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology/the-great-transformation The report has quite interesting data on the categories of ICT readiness (environment index, readiness index for individuals / government/business, usage index) as well as a couple of random case studies. Every index has its weaknesses and it could by argued why this or that category exists (e.g. the business phone installation fee) or is missing (e.g. individual competences) - however, the data collection seems quite solid and provides insights into countries (check out the drill down data viewer http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology/the-great-transformation/network-readiness-index) The rest of the report is, however, more than disappointing. Related to my own field, I find buzzwords like TRANSFORMATION 2.0 and LOCALIZATION 2.0 - the authors of the chapter on localization 2.0 have the great insight that we now actually need to talk to people when we localize products or take culture into consideration - such a chapter in a WEF publication, ignoring the past decade of research on internationalization, what a disappointment (poor British Telecom - the authors' company- relying on those ideas...). Actually, this attitude seems to be consistent in the report. All in all, a good data collection with plenty of marketing for the authors' institutions, some interesting thoughts and relevatively poor recommendations, at least from the ICT view. Still, we made it to the bronze medal...