rofessor Charles R Nesson

Given the impact of globalisation and the increasing use of technology to propel sustainable development, Jamaican and other Caribbean enterprises must keep up with their international competitors and customers while ensuring that their strategy is oriented to focus on powerful global positioning.

With this in mind, the Caribbean Business Report is pleased to partner with Growth Facilitators (group process architects) to present an insightful, thought-provoking weekly series on CYBERSTRATEGY as a critical success factor in regional business growth and advancement. This week we feature Professor Charles Nesson, who will be one of three Harvard thought leaders presenting at a one-day conference on cyberstrategy on October 13, 2005 at the Jamaica Pegasus.

Professor Charles R Nesson is the Weld Professor of Law, Faculty Co-Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Security Harvard Law School

CBR: What is Cyber strategy?

Nesson: Cyber strategy is the strategy of using the new functionalities of internet-mediated communications space (cyberspace) to help conceive and achieve your goal.

Newness in the communications environment stems from the ability of any network node to connect with any other in order to send and receive digital signals. These signals, which can be cheaply produced with skilled use of digital tools, convey message in text, audio and video. This product can be shared, stored, searched, retrieved and reprocessed.

Cyber strategy is thinking in a mind frame that combines the implications of this insight with the knowledge and capabilities of the past in order to create the future you want to achieve.

CBR: What will Cyber strategy do for Caribbean Business Leaders?

Nesson: What will you do with it? What is the future you want? How do you want to position yourself, your company, your country, your culture in it?

The savvy business man who seeks a strategy of survival and growth in an online world, must think, "Who are my potential customers?" He must not only think of those sitting at computer screens, but rather think of potential customers as all to whom you might by any means communicate your message, who in turn have means (eg internet, phone, face-to-face) and motivation to respond. Appreciate internet without becoming limited by it.

What is your message? What is the identity you express? How does a potential customer find you in the net? What words in what languages when plugged into Google lead to you?

Cyber strategy will challenge you to express your identity- individual, corporate, country. Your cyber strategy will be your expression of it, in both structure and content.

Cyber strategy involves an embrace of this new field of play. The power of message has been significantly liberated from capital. In this new space, financial capital is of relatively minimal importance compared to vision, intelligence, art and design, in the creation of cyber wealth. This offers possibility for new orderings of power.

CBR: Why should business leaders focus on cyber strategy,. Is this not an area for the IT managers?

Nesson: With the advent of the Internet, we have passed an inflection point in the history of communications technology. Internet facilitates the aggregation of shared intellectual capital. The value of creativity grows as it is shared. Digital technologies greatly facilitate sharing human process. With the building of such process comes individual and common wealth.

In this fast-evolving communications environment, there will be winners and losers. Success in this future requires strategic thinking. This is not the task of the tech department or the Marketing division: it is the task of the CEO.

E-mail your comments or questions to nesson@law.harvard.edu

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