THE DOHA SUMMIT • BRIGHT SIMONS MPEDIGREE NETWORK • GHANA

Bright Simons
MPedigree Network - Ghana

OUR EVER-SHRINKING
WORLD
Simons says the day is not far when every person on
the planet will be able to access a level of connectivity
commensurate with his bare communication needs

W
hat do you think will be
the big game changer in
the next three years?
It may sound like a smart-
ass attitude to suggest that mobile value-
added services that take after our mPedi-
gree model (www.mPedigree.Net) shall be
the rage in the coming era. But to be entire-
ly frank, we are confronted now with what
clued-in organizations such as the WEF
Global Agenda Council on the Future of
Mobile Communications call “Post-Ubiq-
uity.” This simply means that we can al-
ready see on the horizon a time when eve-
ry person on the planet can access (and
afford) a level of connectivity commensu-
rate with their bare communication needs.
In such an era the current value proposi-
tion to consumers will become severely
outmoded, and diminishing returns shall
set in all fronts as underutilization (from a
value perspective) feeds into underinvest-
ment and widens opportunity gaps. Mo-
bile-to-mobile will diminish in its allure,
and the game plan would then necessarily
have to be based on an ecosystem in which
mobile is an enabler of multiple connec-
tions to different nodes of value, only
some of which will be “device-defined.”
Many such “nodes of value” shall be new
pivots of innovation such as “clouds,” “an-
alog points” (as in, for instance, a public
booth that prints out useful material), me-
dia platforms as well as social boxes such
as mass campaigns, in fact a great many
conceivable “things.” So the simple an-
swer is that the game changer shall be
post-ubiquity infrastructure that converts
mobiles into enablers of whole new val-
ue-ecosystems.
Why will the smartphone kill the laptop?
If this was strictly about “tech futurism,”
then you probably want to say yes. Voice
prompts and 3D-virtual keypads could
probably render the keyboard redundant.
And network-side services incorporating
many of the “cloud-as-a-service” features
we are beginning to take for granted could
conceivably render other critical bulk-de-
manding components of the laptop re-
dundant too. I know a very revered world
leader who uses an analog dictaphone and
wouldn’t touch a computer even if Gan-
dhi himself prescribed it. This great man
could conceivably upgrade to a next-gen-
eration version that linked to some web-
based word processor and ultimately other
output devices when the situation requires
it. Notions of 3D spectacles and all sorts of
peripherals suggest an impending unbun-
dling of the laptop. In that sense the laptop
as a device in and of itself can be said to be
trekking down the path to extinction. But
we have to look at the ergonomics of our
built environment too, and the socio-eco-
nomic imperatives they compel. Do you
seriously want to visit your personal bank-
er and see him in 3D goggles and combo
ear-mouthpieces?
Change takes time because we are as
emotive as we are utilitarian.

34 TRENDS | June 2010 World Economic Forum June 2010 World Economic Forum | TRENDS 35
THE DOHA SUMMIT • BRIGHT SIMONS MPEDIGREE NETWORK • GHANA

Unfortunately, I don’t have very orig-

inal or specific insights into this particu-
lar niche in the space, but I know a chap
in India who is distributing social games
over mobile networks to ordinary phones
in order to transform health-related be-
havior for the better. Surely, this demon-
strates that there is no end to originality in
the entertainment segment of the mobile
innovation space.

Data rates are different in different

parts of the world. How do the oppor-
tunities for mobile companies in devel-
oping world differ from those in the de-
veloped world?
This is a very interesting question. There
is actually now a substantial body of em-
pirical research that has established signif-
icant segmentation in the market, partic-
ularly in the developing world. What has
become obvious is that the “low end” of

Corbis
the data service spectrum (such as SMS) is

Entrepreneurial intermediaries can offer a platform
for creative individuals to retail ringtones and the like
What is the single biggest innovation in
the industry in the past 10 years?
Once again I have to be cheeky and say
the unbundling and reintegration of mo-
bile infrastructure via more complex net-
work linkages – such as mPedigree! And
in case you’ve not read up on our mPed-
igree activities in Africa, here is what we
are enabling. Consumers buy medicine
from a physical point of purchase (like a
pharmacy). They then remotely connect
to a supply chain cloud a few thousand
kilometers away and interact with dedi-
cated customer service units of the medi-
cine-maker to assure themselves that they
are buying the genuine article – as it was
when it left the factory – and that noth-
ing untoward has happened in the inter-
vening time. Intelligent automation, as
you might have guessed, drives the scal-
ing up. Other value enablers in this eco-
system include medicine safety regula-
Corbis
tors and supply chain actors. In addition
to safeguarding the business of medicine-
makers from criminal counterfeiters, the
service actually also saves lives – those of
patients and consumers, because surveys
have shown incidents of counterfeit med-
icines in many parts of Africa that effec-
tively give patients a one in three chance
of taking something that can cause them
harm when they buy medicines to treat
their ailments. I am sure you can imag-
ine a million and one applications based
on iterations of the same concept. In my
view, therefore, mobile cloud computing
takes the crown.
Are developers for entertainment and
functional software concentrating too
much on one specific market right
now? Are we headed towards a duopo-
ly? How will that affect the entertain-
ment industry?   tribution of app-based products, might
still the bomb as far as revenue drivers go.
And with average revenue per user con-
tinuing its downward slide for the voice-
segment, mainly because of intense com-
petition, telecom utility managers need, of
course, to become more savvy, and ruth-
less, about the optimal path to revenue di-
versification. If the return on investment
case for high-end data services appear
even a bit hazy, operators in the develop-
ing world tend to cut corners – a situation
that accounts for the atrocious mobile In-
ternet services being peddled by some of
the operators across Africa, for instance.
How can the entertainment industry
capitalize on the recent developments
in mobile phones?
The lure is toward end-to-end deliv-
ery, but it is perhaps prudent to coun-
sel a more ecosystemic view of the op-
portunities. Infrastructure bottlenecks
shall persist to the extent that the tele-
com sector can only remain an enclave
of innovation, cut off from the turmoil
elsewhere in emerging economies, up
to a point. Thus, rather than mass dis-
one consider auxiliary services just as
much? For instance, the distribution of
tickets for live events is still troubled
by inadequate retail infrastructure.
Mobile may be a way to go. It may
also, as has been seen in Ghana, albeit
tentatively, offer a path for grassroots
innovation, in which entrepreneuri-
al intermediaries offer a platform for
creative individuals to retail ringtones
and the like (a kind of pared-down Ap-
ple AppStore). The opportunities are
clearly available, provided a holistic
enough mindset is held.
How will Google’s Android OS change
the market with Internet capability on
all new devices?
One is immediately tempted to pro-
claim, in that event, the onset of the
decline of telecom power, as the anar-
chic model of the Web is carried over
to the wireless networks, especially in
developing countries, and with that the
business angst christened by Chris An-
derson as FREE. It does certainly mean
(and I am speaking generally about the
mobile Internet rather than Android per
se) that what were once thought of as
marginal markets, such as many places
in Africa, shall be brought even clos-
er to the dot.com trends that spawned
such game changers as Google. Giv-
en the uncracked nature of infrastruc-
ture financing in the exciting frontier
markets, nothing is for certain though,
especially about the speed at which
change shall proceed.
After years, the most developed mar-
kets have yet to find a way to success-
fully monetize traditional media online.
What hasn’t the industry considered?
I hear that the brilliant and affable Pierre
Omidyar has launched a new pay-and-
read citizen journalism business. Pierre
founded eBay, remember? There sure-
ly must be something there as far as in-
novating the channel is concerned but,
perhaps, the improvement of the core
product should come first, which is
what Pierre seems to be doing. The end
product of citizen journalism is definite-
ly quite different in feel and look than
traditional media. I do have some back-
ground in the space, as an early support-
er of OhMyNews (english.ohmynews.
com), so this is a somewhat painful
subject. I see two key tensions: inno-
vating around the channel of distribu-
tion and around the product itself – i.e.
content. OhMyNews cracked the latter
when they figured out that for every sto-
ry there is probably someone closest to
it and more qualified to present it (with
a little help) than even the most gifted
generic reporter. I am not sure wheth-
er they completely cracked the former.
What we know though is that the model
didn’t completely take over the world as
some of us had hoped. People will quite
surely pay for authoritative reporting,
which in a certain sense is the reason
why many organizations such as Eura-
sia and Control Risks, who work close-
ly with journalists, are in business, but
it is not clear what other factors are def-
inite anchors of monetization.

36 TRENDS | June 2010 World Economic Forum June 2010 World Economic Forum | TRENDS 37