Communications of the ACM

type of tools available. With rates well above 70%, employees in countries such as Brazil, China, India, and Mexico assign more importance to the use of the latest consumer IT than their mature-markets counterparts. In fact, having the latest technologies at hand is so important to emerging-market employees that a large percentage is willing to pay for their own IT. And as their country’s middle class grows, more of them can pay. More than 36% of our study participants from emerging economies have no objection to paying for some of their devices and applications for work, contrasted by mature-market countries, where employees are less inclined to shell out for such tools (see Table 4).

This figure is particularly interesting in the light of differences in purchasing power, which is 2 to 15 times lower in emerging markets than in mature markets. 5 Despite these differences, the prospect of using a consumer device or application for work and home seems to hold more appeal for people in emerging economies. The novelty of these tools may be one reason. Another may be that IT policies are still nascent in emerging markets, owing to the lack of a preexisting infrastructure. Employees who have long been restricted to using certain mandated technologies may perceive consumer technologies as desirable must-haves.

Consumer technologies and economic Growth The arrival of consumer-originated devices and applications into the workplace is empowering a second iteration of an employee-driven IT revolution. The first revolution, over 40 years ago, was the invasion of corporate offices by employees armed with personal computers. While this revolution was largely mitigated by IBM whose endorsement precipitated acceptance by information systems departments and, in time, policies for appropriate use, today no dominant vendor with the clout of the near-monopolistic IBM exists that could come to the rescue. The number of consumer devices and applications are too many, their functionalities are too diverse, and their price points are too low.

the adoption
of consumer tools
and applications
in the workplace
is more prevalent
in emerging
markets than in
mature markets.

While the majority of companies are still in the contemplative, reactive, or experimentation phases, ranging between the extremes of “authority,” such as the exercise of tight control over the scope and number of consumer devices and applications entering the organization, and “ laissez-faire,” that is, the boundless tolerance for allowing consumer devices and applications into the workplace, they have acknowledged, voluntarily or not, that IT consumerization poses a new set of challenges that will need to be adjusted for. By broadening the scope of allowable devices and applications, for example, or by providing employees with IT allowances as job benefits, or by segmenting users based on consumerization profiles, companies around the globe have a variety of options to choose from.

Companies with workforces that are already embracing consumer IT and extracting measurable business value from it will be best positioned to capture those opportunities. Emerging markets might be one of them. Worldwide, emerging markets will serve as the primary engine of economic growth in the years to come, accounting for 70% of it. 3 The increasing use of affordable consumer technologies in such economies will help drive that growth by opening untapped markets. While consumer IT might only be one factor in fueling this growth, it is certainly an important one. The Indian government, for example, has provided subsidized tablet PCs to some of its most rural areas, 1 while the southern state of Karnataka is issuing iPads to all its state ministers. 4 The Four Seasons Hotel in India has adopted iPads in both its hotel lobbies and restaurants, 2 and an agricultural company in India has developed a mobile app that lets farmers use their personal cellphones to sell produce. Delivered mostly in a pictogram format, farmers can see what current market prices are for specific types of produce, how much of each type is needed and where it is needed. These are just a few examples of how consumer IT is applied and utilized in those countries.