DIGITIZING ASIA 2020: PART II – Open Letter to the Presidents of Emerging Asia

In part I of this series, we assessed the economic wonders of Emerging Asia and looked at the pros and cons of different paths for the people and the planet. We questioned the simple choice between catching up v/s not catching up with the west, and where intrigued by the third path, the "Asian way". This third path was identified to be very much about digitizing Asia, and in this article, part II in the series, we take this theme one step further – i.e. for the next decisive decade for both humans and our planet, how do we digitize the continent that is on its way to become the global centre of gravity in this century?

Digitizing Asia – The Wrong Question?

Mr President, at the twilight of the current crucial decade I symptomatically attended the most crucial event for the most crucial region with the most crucial of questions. I attended Horasis, the exclusive and somewhat “arcane” event I think You know about - initiated by the former director of WEF and attended by ministers and CEO:s from the global power elite – with a mission to “advance solutions to the most critical challenges facing corporations today”.

This specific event was the Horasis Asia meeting, and together with an impressive bunch of Asian digital experts, I was invited to the panel I reckon as one of the most essential, perhaps THE most essential, themes of them all, i.e. “Digitizing Asia” - not a small subject to cover on 1,5 hours so to speak.

Measuring from the comments from attendants, the sessions apparently turned out quite ok - “The insights from you and the panel were profound” and “Clearly the most impactful meeting!”, “Amazing and insightful contribution” etc.

Still, my most sincere reflection was not that of satisfaction – instead in my guts I felt troubled, deeply troubled. Cause if I was not only a citizen of Asia, if I was not only the owner of?a big corporation in Asia, but if I actually was the president for one of the Asian countries in general and Emerging Asia in particular, was this really the most important question to ask? How Asian citizens should connect with each other online, and how we should embrace technological disruption? I felt deep in my stomach that it was not.

Digitizing Asia? Aren’t we already digitized?

Digitizing Asia – There’s a New Sheriff in Town

From a quantitative perspective we have today 52% internet penetration. Only looking at South East Asia and East Asia that number is 61%, with giants like India growing by 100 million people online a year. With 10% increase per year (India +20%) this is going to be 100% in a mere half decade. We spend in Asia more time on the internet than any other continent, with the largest ASEAN countries + India despite considerably lower connections speeds leading with mind-blowing 7-10 hours a day.

And, even more interesting, from a qualitative perspective we are not only “catching up” with the west, i.e. digitizing in the same way – at least not entirely. Instead we have more mobile share of the internet connection than all the western world, we have more share of voice searches, more ride-haling use than any other continent. We book our restaurants on the mobile, pay with WeChat and GrabPay, and we have by far higher mCom penetration – leap frogging the fact that we have remarkably lower share of credit card use than the western continents, compensated by the highest penetration of mobile banking, crypto currency and mobile wallets in the world.

So, what is there to digitize??

Digitizing Asia - The Right Question

If I thus was president in any of these extremely dynamic tiger economies - with an ASEAN population as large as Europe, and an India and China each twice as large as the whole of Europe – the most important question would be a completely different one. The matter would not be the one of embracing or not, the matter would be about what to embrace and how to do it. More specifically, the key question for me would be:

What are we doing with all this digitizing?

And here is the answer: to some part it is about gaming, where 3/5 of the populations spending the most on gaming are Asian. But apart from that, what we spend our time on at internet in Asia is social media. We have more social media accounts than any other countries in the world, and we spend more time in social media than any other countries in the world, more than 3 hours in general (in Vietnam 2,5, in Philippines 4h).

Mr President, please educate me - what is the ROI on that?

When it comes to “Digitizing Asia”, are we going to let the American dinosaurs force us into replicating the mistake of the western world? Or should we use the cultural strength of the different cultures of Asia, to form totally new processes?

Digitizing Asia – The Food for Thought

Again, in the science of technology you usually differ between technology as a) a rather deterministic implementation and diffusion on one hand, or b) technology as a much more dynamic force with high technological “interpretative flexibility” and more of a “trigger to change”.

Using the second type of mindset, it is up to us how we will shape this future, and make up our mind for if we should become American lookalikes, or use the unique opportunity we have for elevating our cultures and populations with a much richer use of hi-tech, to fulfil more enriching and enabling possibilities for countries, companies and citizens.

So, Imagine. Imagine if we took only 20% of the time allocated to social media, 36 min, and transformed it to upgrading your skills instead. That would be nearly 1,5 months (!) of full time study a year. For all the people in one country!

Imagine what that would do for that person’s skills, for his or her job fulfilment, careers and personal well-being. Imagine what that would do for his family.

And imagine what that would do for a whole country. With every single citizen, upgrading their skills 1,5 months every year. And not inventing any "new time", but using just a little fraction of the time we today already spend on social media.

That's what would be my task nr 1 if I was the president of a country in Emerging Asia, and that would probably be my single biggest contribution for the well-being and GDP of my country. That is the way I would "digitize" Asia.

Digitizing Asia – The Mission and the Missionaries

So how should you be able to succeed in such a transformation? Anyone who knows their change strategies understand the value of going with the flow instead of against it – which in this case of course would mean the reinventing of a learning that feels more like gaming and social media ;)

And this is exactly what we and our network within AIAR are dealing with. We want to make learning fun again. We want it to be cool to be competent, and to get your 15 seconds of fame from having knowledge instead of showing a lot of "skin" on Instagram.

And we also want you, when you've had fun during the learning and then got social cred for what you've learned, to be able to go from there with a mobile degree that is 100% viable for your future employers.

All this we solve with the world's most modern format within gamification and social media, added with the world's most advanced hi-tech in AI and blockchain for personalization and security.

And then we give it away. For free. With a freemium model where you learn for free, and only pay a minimum sum for examination - and even can get the examination for free by earning credits or be endorsed by your company or country.

And that is, of course, where you come into the picture, Mr. President. You can soon become the first president in the world to create education for just about everyone in your country. That is, for everyone who have two things. Access to a smartphone (which is if not all, so extremely many), as well as motivation (which if not all, at least very, very many). And yes, I forgot, they also have to allocate as much as 20% of their time on social media to learning instead - a tough decision to make ??

Digitizing Asia – Going from Fiction to Facts

So, if I was president in one of these fantastic countries, then that's the question I would ask, and that’s the solution I would make my primary task.

My strength is a young, hungry population. But other parts of the world has an even younger, and even hungrier, population - so that's certainly not the whole answer. For nothing will come of this young, hungry population unless the potential is fully realized.

So, the correct answer is that it will all be a lot about education. In the global reskilling crisis of the 4th industrial revolution, Asia is among the most vulnerable. You have vast populations, and you have young populations. But in the digital decade of 2020s that won't make any real difference, if they won't be skilled in the right way. Skilled and empowered by power skills which will not only have effect on the economy and well-being of the country and its citizens, but on every other objective in the SDG:s of UN.

This can be done in the similar way the Western countries did – with exclusive brick-and-mortar schools for the few, several years of leave for study, expensive trips to and from schools for both people and the planet etc.

In case we would, we are in a hurry. From 2015 to 2030 it is estimated China, India, and Brazil will see an increase of 56 million tertiary enrolments. At current levels, the physical tertiary infrastructure is unlikely to be able to keep pace, and a ramp-up in infrastructure investment is neither giving any reasonable return on investment, nor is it even physically possible (and now we haven't even started talking about how mother earth would feel).

Digitizing Asia – The Asian way!

And, as goes for the alternative, the most robust study from Citibank shows how 50% more young people from emerging markets compared to older generations in the developed economies, are open for mobile apps to either complement, or even substitute, the offline education. 8/10 of them so much they are even willing to pay for it (compared to not even half in the developed economies). Does this indicate a fresh way of thinking or does it, so fresh I am tempted to even call it "the Asian way".

So, what can you, Mr President, do? Well, with this in the back of your mind, you can show that emerging Asia is so much better than the west, that you are more innovative, more creative, more ethical and…. Yes, more digital ?? You can initiate the "digitizing of Asia" for real, where you make sure to move information instead of people. Once your population start working it is all about a gig economy with remote work (this is, again, written some month befor covid-19 outbreak, and the "remote species" it catalyzed, Ed.). But even as they are studying for the job, you can think completely out of the box, and use the advantage we have in the mobile behaviour on this side of the globe.

Call it innovation, disruption, revolution or whatever you want.

We call it reinventing global learning.

To succeed in that, you must go with the flow, instead of against it, you have to use the device that all your citizens use every day and all the time. You must deliver a format that makes it attractive (and maybe even fun :-O) for people to choose education instead of gaming and social media. And you must then make sure that the certification is so secure that it can be viable for future employers.

If you fix it, you will not only rule the Asian market, you will rule the world.

And if you don't fix it, I will. But then you need to give me a call.

Cause I’m just a mail or a phone call away (WA +46 733 90 18 80, [email protected]) ??

The first one calling wins. C u soon :-D

Rufus Lidman, Fil. Lic.

Rufus Lidman is one of the worlds’ top 100 tech influencers with 50.000 followers for input with emerging technology within emerging markets. As such he draws his insights from a broad tech experience as a serial entrepreneur with 6 ventures and 2-3 ok exits, background within PhD-studies within change processes, 5 books on the subject of digital strategy, and honoured to be member of the exclusive group of 0,1% companies that has developed apps with more than 10 million downloads. His latest venture is called AIAR, based in Singapore, reinventing learning for emerging markets in general and emerging Asia in particular.?