Yankee Group: Anywhere Lessons from Emerging Markets

A Critical Anywhere Step: Getting from Nowhere to Somewhere

Emerging markets have unique impediments to the expansion of connectivity that Yankee Group calls Anywhere. Our Anywhere Index provides a simple but powerful measure of the pace of connectivity around the world (see Exhibit 1). We call markets with less than one broadband line per three people “Emerging Anywhere” regions. Their lack of broadly available connectivity means that more traditional means of sharing information, consuming media and conducting transactions are still required, so the physical location of people and things is still a critical factor in what can be accomplished.

But at the lowest levels of digital connectivity, even traditional means of connecting that are well-established elsewhere, such as newspapers, television and banks, are themselves not broadly available among the region’s population. As a result, those populations aren’t Anywhere or even Somewhere. Without access to either traditional or digital systems, they are virtually Nowhere in the globalizing economy.

In our forthcoming book, “ANYWHERE: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the Way We Do Business” (published by McGraw-Hill), we highlight the breakthroughs ahead when the introduction of wireless networks gives those very nascent connectivity markets a way to surmount missing infrastructure. Connectivity leads directly to better health, increased literacy, improved economic status, political power and more.

Keywords

Emerging, market, Anywhere, lesson, connectivity

Pages
Publish Date & Author(s)

by Emily Green, President and CEO
6 pages
December 2009