7 THE EMERGING ECONOMIES IN THE DIGITAL ERA Marketplaces, Market Players, and Market Makers

This paper directs analytical focus to the roles that emerging economies can and do play in global digital innovation. In doing this, it challenges the conventional wisdom that developing countries are merely market places for digital products innovated in the industrialized world, sketches out some key patterns in the roles of emerging economies in the processes of global digital innovation, and examines their innovative potential by assessing their capacity in terms of research and development and innovative activity. Emerging economies are fast-growing and hence increasingly important market places, with their increasingly sophisticated users just beginning to exercise their power in dictating the future of digital consumer products. Emerging economy enterprises are also increasingly relevant market players, having leveraged their success in home markets into inroads in global markets through a number of distinctive competitive advantages. Finally, emerging economies also have great potential as market makers: they have the opportunities to shape future global digital markets as a result of their own prowess in digital innovation and the complementary resources they have to offer. In terms of the innovative potential of emerging economies, this paper argues that while advanced countries are the main purveyors of radical, breakthrough digital innovation, emerging economies will continue to find that their strength in shaping global digital markets, at least in the short and medium term, lies in the experimental modular innovation that is achieved through improvements in specific applications driven by on-the-job learning-by-doing and user-driven product modifications. While different forms modular innovation in emerging economies may not necessarily pose a direct challenge to currently dominant digital producers, they do, however, have the potential to alter the structure of future global digital markets. Thus, both in terms of their market power and their production and innovation possibilities, emerging economies are positioned to increase their presence in the digital era.