Jean-Francois Belisle

The 10 Most Hi-Tech Cities in the World

June 21, 2012 by Jean-Francois Belisle

When asked the question “which are the top 10 hi-tech cities in the world?”, even the most “tech savvy” candidates tend to have a hard time comparing and/or imagining what is happening on the other side of the globe. In this way, the question is worth asking, and frankly, is far from easy to answer. When searching on the web, most of rankings found in Shakespeare’s language, such as the Popsci or the Wired rankings, tend to focus exclusively on American cities. Personally, the ranking I found the most interesting was one published on the website of The Age, a mainstream newspaper from Melbourne, Australia. Based on six criteria (1. Broadband speed, cost and availability; 2. Wireless internet access; 3. Technology adoption; 4. Government support for technology; 5. Education and technology culture; 6. Future potential), here is their conclusion:

1. Seoul, South Korea;
2. Singapore, Singapore;
3. Tokyo, Japan;
4. Hong Kong, China;
5. Stockholm, Sweden;
6. San Francisco (and Silicon Valley), USA;
7. Tallinn, Estonia;
8. New York, USA;
9. Beijing, China;
10. New Songdo City, South Korea.

The presence of four cities (Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Songdo City) from the Four Asian Tigers is not surprising. However, the presence of cities like Stockholm (Sweden), Tallinn (Estonia) and New Songdo City (South Korea) is certainly something that yields the most expressions such as: “oh”, “ah”, “what’s that”, “are you kiddin’?”, “really?”.

The presence of Stockholm makes sense when looking at rankings that classify the city as the one with the fastest broadband speed in the OECD countries. Moreover, Stockholm is acting as a pioneer in the use of green technologies such as RFID technologies, and paired with the high number of engineers due in part to the presence of Ericsson, those could be factors that contribute in making this city’s ranking first among cities outside Asia.

The city of Tallinn, mostly unknown to North Americans, except for those who have learned the world’s capitals after the fall of the USSR, is known as the Silicon Valley of the Baltic Sea. The city is also known as being the first to organize an election vote on the internet using smartcards, as well as for its free wireless internet facilities across the city. Tallinn is also recognized for the well-known start-up Skype.

Finally, New Songdo City, situated 60 kilometers East from Seoul, is certainly the most fascinating city in this ranking. The city was built from scratch by Gale International, a real estate development and investment firm, and is considered by technology experts as the ultimate digital city of the future. Even if the city is still upon completion, it is already considered in the top 10 of the most hi-tech cities in the world.

New Songdo City - A New Worldwide High-Tech City Built from Scratch

I can briefly conclude this post by noting that it is nothing new for North America to be limping way behind Asian countries in terms of hi-tech development, and this ranking is only a glimpse of what’s coming next in technology development….

Jean-Francois Belisle

The Intelligent In-Store Displays Are Watching You

June 6, 2017May 6, 2009 by Jean-Francois Belisle

The famous expression “Big Brother is watching you”, directly taken from George Orwell’s visionary book entitled 1984, written in 1948 and published in 1949, hits the field of marketing one more time. And this time, in-store advertisers are the “evil” marketers involved. In this way, in-store advertisers have started to use facial recognition software incorporated into displays to gather consumers’ information such as gender, age and ethnicity (through skin pigmentation) in order to (with a millisecond lag time) target these consumers with personalized interactive ads. This in-store practice is labeled “ad targeting” and parallels the online commonly used practice of “behavioral targeting”, but in an offline store context. This new practice can also be seen as an extension of the detailed procedure described in the well-acclaimed 1999 business best-seller book “Why We Buy – The Science of Shopping” by Paco Underhill, in which the analyst is hiding near the consumer and noting on a track sheet every single characteristic and movement he, the consumer, makes.

A good visual example of in-store displays that target consumers by personalized ads is illustrated in a scene of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie “Minority Report” where the character played by Tom Cruise is a fugitive running through a shopping mall populated by interactive ads targeted directly at him. Real-life examples include, as noted in Emily Steel’s Wall Street Journal article, the American restaurant Dunkin’ Donuts, where people ordering a coffee in the morning are exposed, based on their characteristics, to ads at the cash register promoting, for instance, the chain’s hash browns or breakfast sandwiches. Moreover, this practice has also been used in Japan, where interactive billboards have played the same role for consumer as in-store displays.

Conclusion

The practice of in-store ad targeting is a new dream coming true for marketers, like it was the case for behavioral targeting with the Internet at the beginning of the millenium. However, the most relevant question for managers is how will consumers react to this technology – which can help some consumers save time and money, but which can also be perceived as intrusive by others. If computerized in-store displays are to become part of your everyday life, how would you, as a consumer, react to this new technology?

Jean-Francois Belisle

Canada in the Worldwide Top 3 for Internet Penetration Rate

June 6, 2017April 24, 2009 by Jean-Francois Belisle

As a follow-up to my last post entitled The 10 Most Hi-Tech Cities in the World, I was thinking about another simple and easy-to-understand ranking that could impress, destabilize, or even wake up, for a single minute, a curious audience in a business happy-hour cocktail. While preparing myself for a Macromarketing Conference, I ended up discovering interesting findings concerning one of the most important macroeconomic indicators of innovation: “the Internet penetration rate”. Personally, my Top 3 ranking would certainly have included countries such as South Korea, Japan or Singapore. However, strangely, while looking at The Internet World Stats database I ended up being exposed to results that surprised me. I decided to compile my own Top 30 countries with the highest Internet penetration rate for nations with more than a million individuals:

1. Netherlands – 90.1%;
2. Norway – 87.7%;
3. Canada – 84.3%;
4. New Zealand – 80.5%;
5. Australia – 79.4%;
6. Sweden – 77.4%;
7. Japan – 73.8%;
8. Portugal – 72.9%;
9. Israel – 72.8%;
10. United States – 72.3%;
11. South Korea – 70.7%;
12. Hong Kong – 69.5%;
13. Switzerland – 69.0%;
14. Denmark – 68.6%;
15. Finland – 68.6%;
16. United Kingdom – 68.6%;
17. Taiwan – 67.2%;
18. Slovenia – 64.8%;
19. Germany – 63.8%;
20. Spain – 63.3%;
21. Belarus – 61.9%;
22. Italy – 59.7%;
23. Estonia – 59.7%;
24. Malaysia – 59.0%;
25. Singapore – 58.6%;
26. France – 58.1%;
27. Austria – 56.7%;
28. Bulgaria – 55.1%;
29. Romania – 53.9%;
30. Jamaica – 53.5%.

The penetration rates for the Top 5 countries were not that surprising: Netherlands (90.1%), Norway (87.7%), Canada (84.3%), New Zealand (80.5%), and Australia (79.4%). However, what was most surprising is the low Internet penetration rate for what I thought would be the Top 3, that is to say, Japan (ranked 7th, 73.8%), South Korea (ranked 11h, 70.7%), and Singapore (ranked 25h, 58.6%; for some reasons explaining the low penetration rate of Singapore, I would refer to Chandler Nguyen’s blog). Moreover, the extent of rural regions, the importance of traditions and the high number of individuals older than 65 years old are amongst the reasons that could explain low results for the Old Europe countries such as Germany (ranked 19th, 63.8%), Italy (ranked 22nd, 59,7%) and France (ranked 26th, 58.1%). A map summary from The Internet World Stats database concerning the Internet penetration rate by country for 2007, is proposed in the figure below.

Worldwide Internet Penetration Rate by Country in 2007

In conclusion, after reading this post, I hope you’ll network a little more during your next business happy-hour cocktail, but be careful and stay alert to be sure that your new knowledge doesn’t make you a strong candidate for closing the bar…

Jean-Francois Belisle

P.S.: The following blog post entitled Top 30 for Internet Penetration Rate in 2010 is an update of both this post and this ranking.