Advice from Muhammad Yunus to Young People Everywhere: Take Responsibility, and Take Over

To the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, the Arab Spring was an expression of frustration by young people in the region of how little change was happening in their societies. He tells Arabic Knowledge@Wharton his advice to young demonstrators in the Arab world, and elsewhere, is to take responsibility for seeing that change happen.

“Young people see solutions are possible, they see a new life is possible. The old generation is still looking at the traditional way of handling everything. And that is the mismatch that will cause more problems. In 20 years from now the world will be completely different, because of that wave of technology, because of that wave of regeneration coming in.

“Just go ahead, take responsibility and make it happen. They will appreciate you for it. They’re not your enemies. Simply they don’t feel you are mature enough to handle that. Show them you are. It’s like any parent and their kids; they’ll treat them that way even if they are grown up. Not only have you grown up, you have much more experience and ideas than they do, in this short time, because your speed is much faster than theirs.”

Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/KZcDBN

Mobile Marketing: Location Matters — But How Much?

Mobile technology has presented marketers with a new and entirely unique opportunity, says Martin Spann. It could be a hugely lucrative opportunity, too.

“The smartphone is a location-based service,” notes Spann, a professor of electronic commerce at Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) in Munich. “And that means you can integrate the online world with the offline world.”

In other words, says Spann, smartphones have done more than just allow users to remain fully engaged with the virtual world while out and about in the real world. They’ve also allowed companies to reach those users at pretty much any time of the day, no matter where they are. As a result, “location-based” marketing campaigns have become increasingly common, and recently, Spann set out to discover just how profitable those campaigns can be.

Read more: http://t.co/O206iQwC

Litigation, monopoly, and the future of regulating the cellular market

The Justice Department (DOJ) filed an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T to prevent the $39 billion buy-out of T-Mobile, on August 31.

Currently, 90% of the national wireless market is controlled by four carriers, respectively: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile. The Justice Department’s suit was produced in defense of consumer choice; claiming that the merging of the 2nd and 4th largest- and rival- carriers would eliminate options and allow the process of monopolizing the market.

However, Wharton Professor Emeritus of Business and Public Policy and former chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission and AT&T executive Gerald Faulhaber is not entirely convinced of the DOJ’s conclusion. In a paper composed by Faulhaber and Oxford and Navigant economists, evidence distributed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested that small carriers were, in fact, able to compete with the Big Four. Faulhaber went on to state that “in the meantime, nobody knows what the rules are. Competition switches from customers to the regulator.”

Read the story here: http://onforb.es/o15V0Q

GOOD.is also provided a ‘Business Breakdown‘ of the merger in relation to the DOJ and the future of carriers and consumers.

Post-revolution Egypt: How technology can help the struggling job market

The Arab Spring in Egypt was fueled by technology — dubbed the ‘Facebook Revolution‘ – and some say Egypt’s local technology industry is essential to help create jobs for thousands of its disaffected youth.

John Radcliffe of Daily News Egypt explains that while Egypt and the region fully participate in the purchase of information and communications technology (ICT), they rely heavily on outsourcing rather than stimulating their own domestic economies.

Employing an internal workforce is not only “paramount in spurring innovation,” Radcliffe says it will also be “cultivating and securing an industry that promises long-term and consistent return on investment.”

According to The Economist, the nation’s youth unemployment rate is nearly 25%. But even before the Arab Spring took root, the former government made an effort to grow Egypt’s ICT industry.

In 2010, Egypt’s IT exports reached US$1 billion, a rapid growth from US$250 million only five years earlier. In a previous interview with Arabic Knowledge@Wharton, Amir Khaireldin, board member of Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), said that an educational initiative aimed to provide the market with 20,000 graduates yearly.

The security of the IT industry in Egypt suffered during the chaos that surrounded protests against the former Hosni Mubarak regime, when the government cut off access to the Internet. IT companies were forced to rethink plans for Egypt, as previously noted  in Arabic Knowledge@Wharton, Lessons from the Egyptian Frontline of “World Web War 1“.

However, Ahmed Fattouh of Globalist Capital Management told Reuters that “Egypt’s ability to be a tech hub is something that people are definitely looking at. If you end up having a functioning political system that has a good rule of law and private equity investors have the comfort to make longer term bets, they could look at consumer discretionary, oil services and other sectors.”

 

Read the story here: http://bit.ly/r9pTIH