Mr. Sebastian Lévy, Vice President of the Global Forum, welcomed everyone to the Global Forum 2014 «A CONNECTED AGE OPPORTUNITIES & DISRUPTION IN A TIME OF TRANSFORMATION». Stating the obvious that change is inevitable, and that we need to be prepared for it, Mr. Lévy reminded everyone that this is exactly what the Global Forum is all about – discussing our opportunities for the future.

Right after him, Ms. Anna Wyden Guelpa, State Chancellor of Geneva, welcomed everyone to the city of Geneva. In her words, the Global Forum is about three key aspects that equally apply to Geneva and Switzerland, as well:

• Interdependence;
• International;
• Neutrality.

Governments are challenged by the fast-pace change that takes place in the world, but they are also embracing the ways new technologies help strengthen democracy – she used the example of the e-voting system in Geneva. Now the technology is here, and works perfectly fine but it is not the final goal, it’s not the end – it’s the beginning. «Technology is not enough to make the change» she said. «You need to inform people, and educate them to use the new system. You can have a beautiful website and a wonderful iPhone app but you need the citizens to communicate with one another, otherwise the whole concept will fail. »

In the video presentation delivered at the Global Forum, Dr. Hamadou Touré talked about the new connected age and how the future was all digital. «People are now more connected than ever». We’ve seen the modification in the ways we communicate, and how we do business. Mr. Touré also mentioned the pressing need to tackle one of the biggest challenges of the digital world – cybersecurity.

After a lot of thanks for coming to each attendee and presenter at the Global Forum, the welcome addresses is ending, and the Global Forum 2014 can really begin.

The truly interactive and engaging opening session brought together:
• Anna Gomez, attorney at law and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) – the moderator of the session;
• Roberto Viola, Deputy Director General DG CONNECT, European Commission;
• Gary Shapiro, President & CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, USA;
• Jørgen Abild Andersen, Director General Telecom (RTD), Chairman of OECD’s Committee on Digital Economy Policy (CDEP);
• Ching-Long Lu, Ambassador, Taipei representative office in France;
• Theresa Swinehart, Senior Advisor To The President On Global Strategy, ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names And Numbers, and
• Willie Lu, Co-Founder of Technaut Intellectual Ventures; Chief Inventor & “Father” of Open Wireless & Mobile Cloud Platforms for Mobile Devices, USA.
to discuss: delivering innovative, disruptive technologies, critical success factors for innovation, the Internet of everything, Broadband/4G Infrastructures, new Devices and applications affecting mobile networks etc.

Ms. Gomez brought to everyone’s attention that in 1992 there had been as many connected devices as the population of San José, California, and now there were more connected devices than the entire population of the world! «Now that the world is full of connected devices, privacy and security are very important, so it is our job here, at the Global Forum, to talk about it.»

Having just arrived from the airport, Mr. Viola talked about the establishment of the first digital Commission in the history of the EU whose strategic objectives are:
• Creation of a single digital market in EU which would be the largest in the world;
• Drafting and implementation of a unified legislation that is of critical importance for: telecom single market regulation, net neutrality, network security as a response to cyber-attacks) etc.
• Increased investments in digital – as high as 340 billion EUR.
Mr. Viola stressed the multi-stakeholder approach behind this new digital revolution in Europe that will create jobs and drive growth.

Mr. Shapiro said that it was a great time to discuss the ways the world was changing because despite our cultural and political differences, we all faced the same challenges induced by change. He focused on the importance of innovation for growth, and the disruptive technologies that would bring even more options: wireless health, drones, 3D printing, nanotechnologies, robotics, the Internet of things…. For governments to be fully prepared to create an environment conducive to innovation, Mr. Shapiro said, they need to focus on the following aspects: diversity; speed of change, investment capital, and culture.

Mr. Andersen started his presentation with latest statistics related to the digital market in order to stress the point that digital economy is, in fact, extremely powerful in tackling challenges like: innovation, jobs creation, and economic growth. For example, Internet has created 2.6 new jobs for every job it has displaced – it is a job generator not the contrary. He also mentioned the app economy as an example. For Mr. Andersen the biggest problem is that the focus has been too much on the supply side, and forgetting the demand. What’s the point to have a huge broadband when there is no content to exploit it? According to him, we need a coherent approach by the government, and not just a decision made by one minister in charge of the entire case. Last, but not the least, he talked about leveraging data, information, and knowledge, and the big-data driven processes of growth and innovation.

His Excellency Ching-Long Lu started his presentation in a rather unconventional way by using songs and puppets to draw our attention to the fact that Taiwan, with a territory as big as only 0.025% of the surface of the world, and population as small as 0.3% of world population, is a real representative of a digital society due to:
• High level of investments in technologies;
• Strong focus on international collaboration (there are currently 44 ongoing collaborative projects/ programs between France and Taiwan);
• Excessive government investments in education (up to 18% of the national budget);
• Strong focus on intellectual properties;
• Dense import-export matrix, and
• Close collaboration between the private sector and public administration to bring together this new digital era into reality.

According to Ms. Swinehart, the entire world is converting into digital. We’re facing a digital generation who doesn’t know how to handle non-digital things, and we need to educate and protect them, because now their online identity is equally if not more readily accessible as their disconnected identity. The digital economy has already started to outpace the traditional economy, and it has been proven that an online active country increases its GPD by 2.6 times faster compared to non-online active country. This is why there is not a single industry that hasn’t changed its business plan due to technologies.

Mr. Lu talked about three different types of system architectures:
• The First Generation Internet – The Internet of people whose purpose was to connect people together via mobile communication.
• The Second Generation Internet – The Internet of vehicles. Your car isn’t just a car anymore. It’s a mobile office, a mobile home, and even a mobile enterprise!
• The New Generation Internet – The internet of aircrafts. The technology is already available; we just need to put it in aircrafts.

According to him, we need to stop focusing on 3G, 4G, etc. We have to focus on high speed wireless, and our main objective should be improving its performance.

The session finished with an open discussion among the presenters, and a summary of its main highlights:
• EU’s strong focus on digital innovation;
• The need for a coherent approach to data-driven innovation;
• The critical role of internet of things and broadband infrastructure;
• Proper addressing of market failures in the domain of digital;
• Changes in legislation and ways entire industries operate caused by single innovative companies like Uber, for example.

This session included perspectives from different industry players on the challenges and drivers of today’s Connected Age. The session was led by Mr. Lars Albinsson, Creative Director of Maestro Management in Sweden, who started by sharing his point of view on the dramatic changes in the mining industry in northern Europe caused by the evolution of technology. Mr. Albinsson stated that being more connected through application such as Skype, Facebook, and other social media had helped the mining industry keep attracting people by eliminating the feeling of isolation.

Later on he asked the other speakers on the panel to share their thoughts about the topic and the top three critical points that they think humanity should foster. He started with Mr. Gerald Santucci, Head of Unit Knowledge Sharing at DG CONNECT. Mr. Santucci’s view was focused better regulation. According to him, today, policy-making in Europe and worldwide should no longer ignore the need for regulation regarding the usage of internet. Governments must be ready to leverage the possibilities that the Internet offers by creating suitable legislative frameworks, and ensuring complete security for users.

Afterward Ms Gabrielle Gauthey, Executive Vice President, in charge of Global Government and Public Affairs for Alcatel-Lucent took the lead and spoke about the drivers of change. She stressed two main aspects: innovation and disruption. According to her, we are seeing an explosion of the usage of mobile devices (smartphones), an explosion of video usage, and an explosion of cloud usage. These three significantly elements increase the traffic of data. Ms Gauthey also opined that the global network is not done yet, and that we need it now more than before in order to support these developments. At the end, she raised questions about how the world is going to make this transition.

Ms. Claudia Selli, the EU Affair Director talked about the ways smartphone are replacing many things. She said that our phones were going to be far more than just phones, and that we had been getting more and more connected with our Phones. At the end she said our phones tended to be more like tools that we used for daily life and tasks than for anything else. According to her, public sector is changing, and will automatically bring new investment during the next 5 years at least.

Next Ms. Aarti Holla, the General Secretary of the ESOA (European Satellite Operators Association), brought us into the video world – one of the more attractive sectors for most people. She believes that in the near future videos will be available everywhere, anytime, on any device, and at an affordable price. Otherwise it is not going to conquer the market.

Mr. Christian Buchel, Deputy-CEO & Chief Digital Officer at ERDF (Électricité Réseau de France) gave us his impression about the future. For him the user is at the centre of the future. People need to be allowed to benefit new technologies pointing to real-life examples like Paris where more than 3000 points for people to charge their electronic vehicles have been launched. Mr. Buchel, like many others, underlined the fact that investment from the public and the private sectors is needed. He also highlighted another problem related to the aging population that is scared of being left behind us and forgotten. He concluded by saying that people need to use Social Media more and more in order to interact more with each other.

Then Ms. Margot Dor, Strategy Development at ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) talked about the internet of things, and the ongoing process of getting more and more devices and object of any kind connected. By 2020 we will see more than 30 billion devices connected. The important thing for Ms. Dor is to find effective ways to engage in a dialogue and to work with everybody, and strengthen the connections among all kinds of industries. She finished by saying that Governments needed to set standards and implement them through the private sector.

Mr. Gérad Pogorel, Professor of Economics and Management, concluded the discussion by underlining the problems with our connected age – the huge differences in the connectivity speed across the world. For example, in USA the connection is 75% faster than in EU, and we are even not comparing that with emerging countries where the gap is huge. For him this is a difficult challenge, and governments can tackle it by enabling a platform for active involvement of stakeholders, and collaborating with one another on a global level.

Moderator: Jay E. Gillette – Fulbright Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies at the University of Oulu, Finland 2014-2015

Keynote speakers: Thomas J. Rosch – Partner and Counsel Antitrust & Competition Practice, Latham & Watkins, USA
Ismail Serageldin – Director of the Library Alexandria, Egypt.

In this 45-minute long session Mr. Jay E. Gillette wanted to concentrate on the human side of today’s Connected Age, so he chose the topic of the Digital Citizen. According to him, in most of the sessions participants have been talking a lot about ICT and the tools we should use to innovate, but he thinks that we should not forget to talk about the people in today’s digital world, and the consequences of the digital becoming a big part of most of our everyday lives. He describes the Digital Citizen and the Digital Community by two adapted mathematical formulas:
• Digital Citizen = Person * (+ or – ICT)
• Digital Community = Digital Citizens * (+ or – Community) * (+ or – ICT)

Mr. Gillette decided to apply a well-known strategy tool commonly known by the name of SWOT analysis, but he prefers to call it SWTO analysis. Why SWTO? “Start with your strengths. Finish with your opportunities” says Jay E. Gillette. Instead of finishing this analysis by the threats it is more positive and effective to finish with the opportunities which will be the last themes analysed with each subjects and finish on a positive and motivating notes instead of the scary threats we might be facing. The SWTO analysis stands for:
Strengths and Weaknesses: the internal view
Threats and Opportunities: the external view

Jay E. Gillette also mentioned the important factor of knowing where you are now to be able to take actions about the current situation. He illustrated this comment with a quote: “You are not really lost, you just don’t know where you are.” This is how he set the stage for the other two keynote speakers to share their opinions on the matter of Digital Citizens.

The first keynote speaker to take the microphone, Thomas Rosch, explained the difference between UE and USA privacy regulations for digital users. Between not enough regulation and too much regulation of the use of data by digital users, it is hard to find a common ground between the user’s privacy, and the need of the provider of the consumer’s information. There are then three aspects that need to be taken into consideration:
1. Interests of the consumers coincide with the interest of the providers.
2. Interests of the consumers sometimes coincide with the interest of the providers.
3. Interests of the consumers don’t coincide with the interest of the providers.

By using concrete examples, the second keynote speaker, Yasser Elshayeb, explained what he thought were the main opportunities and threats for the Digital Citizen. Fact is that captures and sensors are everywhere as we are always connected. Now the question is how to exploit those data, and how to understand it. The biggest threat he pointed out was the threat to the social aspect of life. We are always connected which enables us to speak with people all around the world but robs some users of the opportunity to connect with people around them. Forgetting the direct interactions in common areas such as when travelling in a plane or a train, and speaking with the passenger next to us, the digital citizen might prefer to put their headphones on ,and listen to music or watch a movie.
Mr. Elshayeb also took one of the terms used by one of the persons in the audience who reacted in the session 1, Drivers for Our Connected Age – “Homo Digitus” as opposed to the “Homo Sapiens”. The Homo Digitus being virtually together, and the Homospiens physically together.

After those two really interesting interventions Jay. E. Gillette lead a brainstorming SWTO analysis session with people in the audience asking what are the Strengths, Weaknesses, Threats and finally Opportunities of the Digital Citizen of today. The audience was really active even though this session was straight after a great lunch break! We finished the sessions with some really interesting key takeaways for each of these categories (see picture below). The final note was to try to balance those strengths and weaknesses so that we evict those threats and make the most of the opportunities the digital world of today offers us.

The session was focused on content, creation, communication and copyrights implications, and it started with the following question: «What is content?» It is about data, information and knowledge. The focal point is promotion of democracy, better innovation processes, business insight, and content. The session was moderated by Mr. Hugo Kerschot, the founder and managing director of Is-practice in Belgium, a Program Management Office that delivers project management and high-level advice for major projects within the international and national public sector in the broader field of the information society. Mr. Kerschot started the session with an «appetizer» talking about different insights of a few European projects about smart cities, smart citizens and open data. Four European cities have developed a “citadel”, an on-the-move smart application that allows data to be visualized throughout a mobile application. “Easy molino”, is another smart city. These smart applications offer services that allow finding playgrounds, metro access, pharmacies, smoke free restaurant, and coffee.

The first speaker, Mr. Alfredo M. Ronchi, the general secretary of EC Medici framework, a professor from the Polytechnical Engineering Faculty of Milan, asked the question: «Does e-content talk to the heart?» Open data, intellectual property rights management, e-content and services present challenges nowadays. Open data is a new ream that needs to be faced. Topics like citizen’s data, intellectual property and privacy are also part of this debate. What about open data and its challenges? The European Union sets guidelines and regulations. They are easy to find, and provide specific regulations about open data. Some countries adopted those directives, while other countries still focus on their own local regulations. The key problems are ownership, privacy and intellectual property. As the speaker mentions, “My data belongs to me” and this should raise young generation’s awareness about how they have to be particularly careful, and think twice before they post personal information on social media. Internet is a good opportunity to promote knowledge of cultural and language diversity, but it is also a challenge. Citizens and languages: the presence of languages on the internet shows that the majority of the content is still in English, although Chinese is getting more and more popular. What is the picture of the actual situation? Evolution is providing some good news as new languages and new formats are being created.

The second speaker, Mr. Alan Shark, Executive Director of Public Technology Institute (PTI), in Alexandria, USA, highlighted the value of e-content and talked about e-government. According to statistics, 61% of the population does not trust governments. There is a real movement to look at the value of content but there is still a long way to go. But what do citizens really want? Smart citizens? Smart governments? Citizens do want meaningful information, as opposed to just data. They wish to be truly heard on policy issues, have greater trust of government, and that is why e-government is important. Citizens also want to help and they produce different information formats. The role of institutes is to make this content clearer.

Ms. Stephanie Bacquère, founder and co-CEO of NOD-A in France, continued the session talking about how to create value from data. She explains how digital culture is important: there is a need to improve and integrate the digital culture in today’s society. She presents a concept of “Makestorming” which is based on the following principles:

• Organize sprints;

• Gather the key talents;

• Prototype at every stage by gathering people from your organization and other organizations;

• Act collectively, like we are all together.

Her advice is to stop planning for the next 5 years. Instead, focus on a concrete project, something small, and precise so that the project can be effective.

Prof. Patrick Yves Badillo, Director and founder of Media@LAB at the University of Geneva, addressed the topic of innovation and social media in a media-based golden age. According to him, evolution shows that innovation and social media are increasing from a general point of view, and it’s getting really hard to truly grasp the importance of social network. But on the other side, there is a digital paradox – there is very little exchange of ideas between different people, and dissemination is restricted to some areas. Social networks among companies are seen very differently from social networks among citizens. The digital native generation is different based on their point of view about the digital world. Media and social networks will change companies within the next coming years.

Ms. Giovanna Di Marzo Serungendo, professor at the University of Geneva concluded the session by pointing out the importance of participative platforms to promote democracy engagement.

The moderator of this session, Mr. Sebastien Heon, Director of Consulting & Political Affairs, Airbus Defense and Space Cyber Security, has been working in the security ecosystem for a dozen years, and yet he’s always hearing the same thing over and over again – threat and vulnerabilities are everywhere. Yes, it’s a fact that there’s threat and vulnerabilities but for him the focus should be on preventing the incident, and not just waiting for it to happen and then resolving it.

The session is focused on security progress all over the world, and we began with Ms. Sarah (Xiaohua) Zhao, partner at Perkins Coie LLP, China/USA. According, to Ms. Zhao, the biggest problem in China is the absence of a comprehensive legal framework for cybersecurity or privacy. There are local rules and administrative measures but they are improving gradually. Basically, every Government around the globe is trying to create or improve Cybersecurity, and the privacy law needs to be based on these 4 cornerstones:
• Enhancing the protection over privacy;
• Tightening the control over cybersecurity;
• Balancing between protection and control;
• Governmental initiatives and commercial opportunities over the market.

Mr. Patrick Curry, MACCSA, UK, brought to our attention the EU Council about cyber security called MAPPING (Managing Alternatives for Privacy Property and Internet Governance). His whole presentation can be summarized as «No to data protectionism! Yes to data protection!», and this should be the moto for every country in the world. «We should secure the foundation before thinking about the window or the roof. Security must be the base of our work. We need to speak the same languages and use the same rules».

Mr. Kevin Boyle from Latham & Watkins, talked about how security process could reduce your privacy, and why you should always try to avoid it unless it’s necessary. When you’re going through the security process you’re reducing the privacy of your employee because the programs you’re going to use will, for example, be reading inside email to prevent risks. According to Mr. Boyle, we need to go back to the first principles of privacy:
• Disclosure;
• Transparency;
• Least intrusion necessary (proportionality/necessity);
• Balance interest (security vs privacy).

According To Mr. Bror Salmelin, Adviser, Innovation Systems, Dg Connect, European Commission, the challenges related to Internet security have become ever more pressing. The economy is dependent on the level of Internet security since many businesses are now only done over the internet. Risks and incidents are on the rise because of lack of trust, economic losses and missed opportunities. The European Commission has developed a cooperation platform called NIS (Network and Information System) with the purpose of centralizing all the information about cybersecurity, and addressing the issue in a better way.

Mr. Oliver Väärtnõu, the CEO of Cybernetica AS from Estonia talked about how every part of the system in Estonia is entirely digital. Estonia’s digitalization can be illustrated by the following facts:
• Every Estonian has a digital ID;
• 95% of personal tax declarations are done online;
• 30% of Estonia’s voting process is done through the Internet
• e-residency offering state-proven digital identities that give access to services like: online banking, education and healthcare.
And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. To manage information from databases and services around the country they use X-road – Estonia’s homemade Secure Communication Layer.

Mr. Bertrand Lathoud, Information Security Officer, Paypal-Europe addressed the issue of complexity of threats landscape, infrastructures and usages which leads to an extreme vulnerability. He gave an example about innovation in usages. It feeds complexity because we want things available at anytime, anywhere, from any device. To avoid this vulnerability we need to shorten our decision cycle because individuals committing fraud don’t wait for regulations to be updated and then interfere with their criminal activities. A decision-making cycle based on the following four steps would be very effective: 1) observe; 2) orient; 3) decide, and 4) act. As Mr. Lathoud put it: « Security on the Internet is challenging but not impossible».

All speakers agreed on one major point – we need to regulate cyber security and privacy in a global way, and not do that on case-by-case basis so that we could prevent a situation where fraudsters had a lot more time to perform their criminal activities.

This session, moderated by Andrew Lipman, Partner and Head of Telecom Group, Bingham McCutchen, USA, focused on:

• The rapid technological change and its impact on: the transformation of industrial sectors into data-, and computer-based segments of the economy, and society in general; the unparalleled interaction between different disciplines, territories, and dimensions of life; and last, but not the least, the overall connectivity;
• The challenges for policy formulation and regulation in effectively achieving real and timeless policy objectives while at the same time promoting and supporting innovation and beneficial change in the Internet Age.

The speakers during this session include:

• Jørgen Abild Andersen, Chairman of OECD’s Committee for Digital Economy Policy (CDEP), Denmark
• Wladimir Bocquet, Head of Policy Planning for Government and Regulatory Affairs, GSMA Association
• Mark Fell, Managing Director, Carre & Straus, United-Kingdom
• Frederic Geraud de Lescazes, Head of Government & Community Relations, Cisco, France
• Imad Hoballah, Chairman & CEO, Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), Lebanon
• Michael Kende, Chief Economist, ISOC – Internet Society, Switzerland
• Hanne Melin, Policy Strategy Counsel, eBay Inc. Public Policy Lab EMEA, Belgium;
• Claudia Selli, EU Affairs Director, AT&T, Belgium.

Each one of them, according to their domain of work and field of expertise, discussed different aspects related to: the growth of the use of smartphones, and big data; the explosion of traffic; the structural transformation of the economy due to telecommunications, and of course, regulation. In regards to regulation, the panelists expressed their views related to the following issues: «Do we have policymaking mechanisms that allow for both flexibility and accountability? Are we innovating the “business of regulation”? How can responsible experimentation in regulation look? How can regulation and policy create conditions for investment?».

Chair/Moderator: Giampaolo Armellin, Head of Research Unit, CRG – Centro Ricerche GPI s.r.l, Italy

Presenters: Carmelo Battaglia, Public Administration and Institutional Relations, INFOCERT, Italy

Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, Director, Knowledge, Ethics and Research Department, WHO-World Health Organization

Florence Gaudry-Perkins, International Director-Global Government Sector, Alcatel-Lucent HQ, France

Antoine Geissbuhler, Professor and Chairman, Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics, UNIGE- University of Geneva, Switzerland

Romain Lacombe, Independent Open Data Expert, France

Mario Po’, Executive Director, Azienda ULSS Venezia & Giuseppe Grassi, Director Cardiology Department, Venice Hospital, Venezia, Italy

Sinikka Salo, Deputy Mayor Healthcare and Social Welfare, City of Oulu, Finland

Ulrich Wuermeling, Partner Global Co-Chair of the Information Technology Industry Group, Latham & Watkins, Germany

Alessandro Zanotelli, President and CEO, SPID, Italy

Mr. Al-Shorbaji opined that connected health was the future but could not be achieved by the effort of just one institution or government. In this line, he underscored the importance of sharing ideas about e-health, as well as the importance of connected health as the way to address the universal health challenge. As an example, he talked about the World Bank and WHO initiative to join their forces to support universal health coverage. The aim of this project is to give every citizen the right to get healthcare regardless of the age and income, and more importantly, without getting poor(er).

Mr. Al-Shorbaji also tried to look at how IT could play a bigger role in the successful completion of the universal healthcare project. According to him, there is a need to deliver affordable services to patients while at the same time ensuring the security of data. We live in times where we are moving from paper version to digital environment, from the first to the second, from active to proactive, availability to accessibility, standalone to network etc.

What are the implications for e-health development?

The development of e-health implies many aspects:

• Confidentiality;
• Legal trust in technology;
• Resistance of professionals and patients to change

Nowadays a huge amount of information is being collected (Big data), so it is important to define the use of this data. Information sharing among health professionals will give to the different actors the opportunity to grasp many angles of views other than just those coming from the patients.

Mr. Ulrich Wuermeling talked about privacy concerns and law with regards to connected health. These growing concerns are linked to governments, companies, and individuals. Connected health involves many risks specially when dealing with highly sensitive data (there is the risk of information misuse, on one side and a growing tendency to strengthen privacy laws in the world, on the other). According to him, the IT solution requirements and laws should be transparent and authorized.

Mr. Alessandro Zanotelli introduced the open infrastructure of digital health care to the audience. He mentioned paperless solution and cost reduction as the main advantages leading to an increase of efficiency. This is the so called Buster System – a robotized drug supply chain system put in place by his company to deliver medication to the end user – which reduces costs, reduces errors and builds efficiency.

Mr. Mario Po’ presented the system for digital management of drugs in the Cardiology Unit of a hospital in Venice, as well as the use of e-prescription.

According to Mr. Antoine Geissbuhler, what is important in delivering service in Switzerland is easing the transitions in healthcare by moving from impatient to e-patients. He also stated that information was care, and that putting IT at use in healthcare was part of the solution to improve quality, and provide support for decision-making.

Again, according to him, the Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics at UNIGE- University of Geneva strives to develop tools to help the hospital such as apps to communicate waiting time to patients, enable information transparency, and help each stakeholder in the healthcare sector make smart choices. Equally effective could also be the following approaches: using video game to help adolescents learn about their medical records; social networking to rank hospitals as an opportunity to patient engagement etc.

Ms. Florence Gaudry-Perkins expressed her view that mobile health (m-health) is a powerful tool for health access in developing countries. Indeed computer penetration is less than 1% whereas mobile penetration in Africa exceeds 80%. At the moment, there is a very little or underdeveloped infrastructure in this part of the world with requires investments from Alcatel. With m-health close to 1 million lives could be saved in Africa over the next 5 year.

The following speakers talked about connected resources and data:

• Mr. Romain Lacombe believes that opening healthcare data will encourage participation of startups to develop m-health application.
• Ms. Sinikka Salo tackled the requirement for e-health infrastructure. She called it the «finish data miracle» because of the major cost cut down in healthcare.

The moderator of this session, Ms. Audrey Mandela, is Board Chair and acting COO for Informilo, a news site and print publisher. The session focused on new technologies empowering women around the world, and on Information Communication Technology development. This is the fifth year that leveraging participation in women leadership is being promoted at the Global Forum.

Ms Effat El Shooky shared with the audience the women situation in Egypt. She focused on the aim of empowering women through ICT. She highlighted the trouble that they faced with the Egyptian’s constitutions. With the old one, women suffered from gender discrimination, sexual violence, social threats and they were not allowed to join all jobs. The new constitution states that gender discrimination is prohibited and includes education, technology, and health care. To illustrate what she said, she gave some numbers – the women workforce today in Egypt is 23% which represents 6.4 millions of the population, and 15% of women are working in high management positions.

As women face some problems of literacy, poverty, discrimination, social and political issues and sexual abuse, they tried to help them by building their personal self-esteem. In order to do so, ICT program developed an integrated system that has been created to support women. For instance, the foundation developed applications such as learning programs to provide the lack of knowledge (especially for women in villages, rural). She concluded her speech by talking about their challenge, which is to have women leader by giving them the necessary trainings they need.

Her motto is: “You need to make your future! We can and will help you make your future!”

Ms Veronique-Ines Thouvenot is Co-founder and Scientific Director at the Millennia2025 Foundation, where she heads the “Women and eHealth” International Working Group, the Global Network of Women in Telemedicine, the Women Observatory for eHealth and Zero Mothers Die Initiative. She supports the Millennia movement which designs the future based on the sight of technology and foresight research process for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The movement is based on solidarity; together we can help and encourage these women to use technologies, have healthcare and provide education. This will help them to have a vision of the future. An important fact is that 3,000 pregnant women die because of a lack of technology (information and know-how), and when a woman dies it creates a disaster. In fact, children don’t go anymore at school, and they are isolated from the community, and as they loose their chance to be integrated, they can’t become leaders in their future. Thus, to avoid this situation they put in place a mobile phone especially dedicated for women in emerging and developing countries. Indeed, this phone (zero mother die) provides them different information about pregnancy and helps them to be aware about the “pregnancy process”. Furthermore it also allows having social and business contacts with others. She concluded saying that using innovative system approach can save lives but has a cost of 2.5 millions $ /year. We can join this Millennia movement by making donation (cost: 30$ per mobile phone).

Ms Laura Mandala, Managing Director of Mandala Research, has been helping the tourism industry unlock, decode and harness the power of travel data for nearly two decades. As she owns a research firm, her goal is to gather data on history in order to demonstrate how women are doing and to make things change. Furthermore, she pointed out that in the US (2012) men are much more employed in high tech occupations. However, there was an increase in the number of women graduating between 1970 and 2010 in medical sector. She also highlighted the fact that in 1985 37% of science companies had been owned by women in contrast with 18% in 2011. An important fact is that Google, Facebook and Twitter ‘s Board of Directors went public with all-male boards. In conclusion of her presentation, Ms. Mandala opined that by mixing genders, people were more productive, innovative and therefore this was beneficial for everybody.

The last speaker at this session was Ms. Anne-Lise Thieblemont, Senior Director of Global Technology Policy and Industry Relations at in the Government Affairs Department at Qualcomm Incorporated. She focused on emerging and developing world. Again, the goal is to provide necessary skills to women in order to link them with university. In doing so, women have the opportunity to become entrepreneurs or engineers. In addition, Ms. Thieblemont promoted Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech) which designs and supports a series of innovative activities to provide training, build networks and offer professional opportunities. WeTech helps women and girls enter and succeed in technology careers, with the goal of improving women’s talent and skills needed to support technological and economic growth.

Chair: Bror Salmelin, Adviser for Innovation Systems, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Moderator: Gary Shapiro, President & CEO, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), USA

Speakers:

Thomas Andersson – Senior Advisor Research, Innovation and Higher-Education, Sultanate of Oman

Martin Duval – CEO & Founder, Bluenove Group, France

Effat El Shooky – Technical Director, Women Business Development Center (WBDC) & Founder of Community-Based Knowledge Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (CKI&SE), Egypt.

Denis Gardin – Senior Vice-President, New Technology Ventures & Managing Director, Airbus Group Corporate Technical Office; President of TESTIA, Airbus Group, France

Pierre Langer: CEO Powidian, France

Michael Stankosky – Research Professor, George Washington University, USA

Yoshio Tanaka – Professor Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Julie Wagner – Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, Switzerland

As an introduction Bror Salmelin wanted to make it clear that innovation could not be controlled but needed to be orchestrated. We can’t predict the future as we are in a vucational society, VUCA standing for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. This means we don’t have a direct control over it but we can catalyse it.

There is a real paradigm change in the way we innovate, we have to be more opportunistic to make things happen and have the courage to experiment. Speed and success rate are also important factors. Being able to identify whether a new idea is going to be successful or not is of critical importance! “Killing” a failing idea as quickly as possible actually helps prevent or minimize waste/loss of money and energy. The change in pattern is to think beyond the ‘outside of the box’ framework, and think in terms like ‘there is no box’ instead. Mr. Salmelin illustrated his sayings on his vision of innovation using the example of the stellar constellation – our vision of another star depends on our location, and on the location of the star itself in the sky. So our point of view about innovation has to be put into perspective, and this mind-set can be facilitated if we put the user at the centre of our thinking process. By focusing on the users we enable powerful end results – a “sense of ownership”, and strong values and opportunities related to innovation.

According to Mr. Salmelin, it is undeniable that diverse research groups provide a higher number of possibilities to innovate than a cluster. Therefore, “diversity” is critical for successful innovation.

To conclude his introduction to the subject, Mr. Salmelin underlined the new jobs of tomorrow: the bridgers facilitating the transfer of knowledge, and the curators taking care of the culture of a society. The question is: “Which one of these do we see ourselves being part of?”

Regarding the discourse of Mr. Thomas Andersson, he introduced his speech with the fact that we are living in a new era where we are able to access, diffuse and use information at a scale never experienced before, and the main reason for such a huge evolution is technology and innovation. He then clearly highlighted four domains that are important for catalyzing innovation:

1. Education as one of the major growth areas which has increased at lot thanks to the information widely available. On the other hand, the quality of self-education is still way below what it could be due to the misuse of the platforms and tools available.
2. Content. The use of the digital world by most users is unfortunately mainly for entertainment rather than for educational or informational purposes. Hence there is high volume search and use of entertainment content than of information, knowledge, educational materials etc.
3. The smart city concept. According to Mr. Andersson we need to connect clusters, and receive responses and data that we will then be able to use in our innovation processes. However, this does need more engagement, and platforms need to be created by the cities themselves.
4. Finally the fourth point was ICT itself. There are a lot of unresolved issues; trillions of devices are always connected; and the question of security, privacy and other personal data protection regulations are going to be harder to balance. Indeed, personal data is really valuable for today’s society and for innovation processes. The issue Mr Andersson underlined is that there is no fixed price for each personal data. They are free and the users usually don’t know that they are used and why they are used for. So in his opinion, we should find a way to turn the logic around and create a sort of exchange between both sides.

The next speaker was Mr. Martin Duval who talked about the importance of culture in the process of creating innovation. Indeed, innovation is about involving each stakeholder of the enterprise ecosystem inside and outside the innovation process. After illustrating this point by a real life example, Mr. Duval then asked an interesting question: “How is it possible to create this culture of innovation?” In order to obtain a relevant or efficient innovation we need to improve the collaboration. So the online tools are important, but so is the offline collaboration. These two factors are of vital essence because innovation is present in every level of the firm. That includes fighting problems in the area of sales, production, idea contest difficulties or bad feedback from the test panel. Finally, innovation is directly linked to social responsibility.

After this presentation, Mr. Gary Shapiro gave the floor to Ms. Effat El Shooky who talked about her work with communities in Egypt. According to her, innovation has to include the lower part of the society’s pyramid too. This process allows figuring out problems in communities all over the world, and helps them identify the root challenge they are facing. Ultimately this should lead to community’s ability to answer the right question, and collect and use existing successful best practices.

To illustrate a successful innovative process from the Airbus Group, Mr. Denis Gardin introduced his associate Mr. Pierre Langer to talk about the Powidian project.

What is Powidian? Powidian is a start-up, offspring of Airbus established as a response to the need for recyclable energy. The idea behind Powidian was to produce and use recyclable energy everywhere and at any time, with a short-term and long-term storage. Any type of reliable energy generators such as solar panels, windmills, and even hydrogen, are used, and according to Pierre Langer, this it is the solution to replace the energy from oil. The solution can be widely applied in different domain, so Powidian is open to offering it to other interested businesses outside telecommunication.

Michael Stankosky talked about the mosaic of innovation i.e. its complexity and numerous various stakeholders involved in the R&D and innovation process. In broad terms he talked about the entire innovation ecosystem – its elements, both tangible (material) and intangible (tacit knowledge); processes, such as codification and convergence of knowledge, collaboration, creative destruction etc.; analytical frameworks such as systems thinking an conceptual analogies, and last but not least, “stochastic elements” such as luck, serendipity and ‘accidents’. In his words, the key concept here is “consilience” which means unity of knowledge.

Then Yoshio Tanaka talked about a project that started at the end of 1980-ies – the IMS project, and still bears huge relevance for our understanding of and work in the domain of innovation. The idea of innovation as dual engines with things and systems was the main focus of his speech.

And last but not least, Ms. Julie Wagner talked about the geographical aspect of innovation. In the past few decades the innovation of communication and telecommunication has only been located in the prestigious Silicon Valley. But in the meanwhile other centers have emerged throughout the world, and they are now within communities which enable them to have direct interactions and views on what is happening in their communities.

An important point that Ms. Wagner introduced is the rationale behind the construction of this type of centers. According to her, the most plausible explanation of this phenomenon is the notion of proximity. Indeed, the proximity facilitates creation and innovation through connections within communities. A good example of this trend is the city of Boston. This city became the new pole of innovation because it succeeded in grouping together the MIT, Google, start-ups, firms with extended R&D and spin off.

According to Ms. Wagner’s presentation, the innovation ecosystem includes three crucial assets/factors:

1. Economic assets represented by the investments;
2. Physical assets regarding the geographical installation of firms to provide an ultimate working environment, and
3. Networking assets regarding how all actors are connected.

Mr. Shapiro concluded this session asking the panelists to choose two keywords that best summarized the topic of innovation for them. Here are a few interesting keywords:

• Enable and Inspire – Thomas Andersson
• Courage and Creation – Bror Salmelin
• Consilience and Wine – Michael Stankosky
• Proximity and Convergence – Julie Wagner