To help maximise the effectiveness of the Transition the Grove web-site I have borrowed several library books on internet marketing. I am currently reading ‘Digital Marketing’ by Godfrey Parkin and found the closing paragraphs of chapter 1 particularly enlightening for the present debate about the National Broadband Network. I thought it worth sharing them here:

[quote]A slow or expensive internet sen/ice infrastructure is an albatross around the neck of economic and educational progress in any nation and is a major handicap to the growth of an entrepreneurial class and the small to medium businesses that it spawns.

Small business generally receives little respect or attention from the media the financial community or politicians. The focus particularly among policy makers is on a few hundred corporations listed on the stock markets. Yet looking to such organizations for solutions to unemployment or economic instability is ridiculous — you could double the number of employees in each of the listed companies and it would barely make a dent on the wellbeing of the economy. Any nation especially a developing nation has to focus on growing — not crushing — the smaller businesses that should make up the backbone of the economy.

In most countries in the world small companies account for more than 8 out of 10 businesses. In the United States where the Fortune 500 employ less than nine percent of the workforce small businesses account for more than 99 percent of all employers — as do they in the UK. The SME sector in most nations accounts for half of the GDP and creates most of the new jobs. Small businesses are also overwhelmingly more creative and innovative than mega—corporations — in the US for example the SME sector files 15 times more patents per employee than large companies do.

Throughout the world the web and ecommerce have been a major boon to small businesses. The web lets small companies compete in global markets and allows them to market themselves locally for a fraction of the cost of conventional marketing. lt permits them to function virtually without the overheads of a physical business and gives them access to support networks that can help them learn manage and grow.

Godfrey Parkin
Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success
New Holland Publisher (UK) Ltd[/quote]
The rest of Chapter 1 also has a very interesting history of the internet since the 1960s which it is instructive to be reminded of. After all we were there!