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.
New supply chain strategies are
presenting additional opportunities to use consumer IT in emerging-