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Helping People to Help Themselves
DAVOS, Switzerland (CNN) -- CNN's Charles Hodson recently interviewed Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, on the digital divide
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Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard
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Q: What is the digital divide?
A: The benefits of information technology thus far have touched a relatively small part of the world's population, and there are still more than 4 billion people who do not have access to its benefits. This is of growing concern to governments as well as industry.
Q: To what extent does it concern you?
A: I believe that systems over time strive for equilibrium, and you cannot have systems in a state of severe disequilibrium for a long time without consequences that are not good, and so clearly when we have this kind of disequilibrium across the world, it will ultimately impact on all of us.
Secondly, I think from a business person's point of view, a CEO needs to be concerned not only about the future of technology, but also about our future markets and employees, because in fact there is no single country or geography that has a monopoly on great ideas, and ideas are what companies are made of.
Q: How do you make sure that the future isn't too distant?
A: One of the things we've done is create what we call a world e-inclusion program. Fundamentally, what we are trying to do is create sustainable business models for the world's rural poor, and our emphasis on this program is to talk about people, not technology, to create sustainable solutions, and to create these solutions through partnerships -- local partnerships with local communities.
Q: Let's come to a specific partnership, LINCOS, which you have in Central America. How does that work?
A: LINCOS stands for "little intelligent communities" and is about creating a solar-powered IT centre for a community. It gives the people of this community access to information that's relevant to them.
If you're a rural villager and the average person makes less than two or three dollars a day, a little information can go a long way, and in this case, information is being provided about soil, about water -- things that are important to them.
Also, the presence of this centre is bringing a whole village together around the power of information technology, so it has been a very successful pilot.
Q: What are you, as a company and as an industry, spending on this?
A: When we launched our world e-inclusion program, we promised to provide up to $1 billion in products and services through partnerships, link-ups with hundreds of partners, and so far, we've made great progress.
For example, here in Davos, we have announced a partnership with the Senegalese government to bring the benefits of it to Senegal, so I should say that Hewlett-Packard has a long tradition of giving back to communities. It has given billions and billions of dollars to education in the past 20 years.
Q: What do you say to those who say this is a grand gesture, but people can't eat computers?
A: Well certainly, it is absolutely true that people need food and shelter and access to education.
Nobody would deny that, but I think it is also undeniably true that information technology can provide access to information and services that can, in real ways and in immediate ways, improve people's standard of living.
If you are a village that lives on fishing, it's important to have access to the latest weather information and the latest information on the schools of fish that you're tracking.
I think the key is that it isn't about providing technology for technology's sake, and it's not about providing a single kind of technology solution where one size fits all. It is about focusing on people at a local level and saying, what information, what services are important to them, and then how do we provide access to that information and those services in a way that's sustainable economically, environmentally and in a way that is culturally sensitive.
Q: In spanning a divide, you bring more people into the community. What do you think could be the consequences of that in your area?
A: I have frequently said that I think we are entering a period of digital renaissance, and what I mean by that is, like the first renaissance, this second renaissance really will be characterised by the power of ideas.
I think our most important asset is ideas, and in fact good ideas can be found, will be found, anywhere in the world. Ideas can have more power now than physical assets or geographic boundaries.
As an IT company, we are always looking for the next great idea, and with 4 billion people out there, I think there must be some interesting ideas. So from our point of view, spanning the divide also gives us access to talent and people and markets that we think will be important to us.
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Helping People to Help Themselves
CNN's Charles Hodson recently interviewed Carly Fiorina, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, on the digital divide
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