Green Collar Technologies

Five Critical Success Factors for Hawaii’s Digital Economies

Five Critical Success Factors

Let’s continue outlining what we need to promote and strengthen our digital economies in Hawaii. Any help is greatly appreciate. Uhm, actually, your participation is required. Please pay particular attention to #3 below and comment below.

1. Availability – bandwidth, training and the affordability of these resources will dictate any need to improve our digital economies. If the Internet isn’t highly available and affordable in Hawaii, there’s simply no need to pursue a digital economy. Therefore, we believe that keeping our systems affordable and available are the highest priority.
2. Understanding – our ability to “get it” will be directly proportionate to our ability to harness the disruptive nature of the Internet.
3. Personal adoption – We need to embrace our digital economies at all levels including, age, demographics, government, schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and individuals. This includes public officials and community leaders at the highest levels. While adopting at the organizational level is important for availability within an organization, the leaders of the organization must personally adopt the web as a tool and make it their own. Those who do “get it” must demand that public officials demonstrate their adoption levels through participation.
4. Assessment and Goal Setting – To succeed we need to know where we are and where we’re going. Green Collar Technologies is compiling a list of resources.
   1. How much bandwidth is available? By area? Future projections?
   2. How much electronic commerce is currently being conducted in Hawaii? Annually? By region?
   3. How many citizens are working on digital projects? How many online jobs exist? How many telecommuters? How many workers in Hawaii spend over 50% of their job online?
5. Analysis, reporting, transparency and ethics – There’s a distinct and obvious absence of key players involvement in raising awareness of the issues. See #2-3. Fear still seems prevalant in many areas as some leaders allow others to represent themselves online. Increased transparency means key players should be writing in blogs to provide updates on key issues. It is becoming increasingly unethical to represent yourself online, through an intermediary in an effort to seem to be something you are not.

The list of five will surely grow and shrink over the next few years. Look beyond a sustainable Hawaii and you’ll find room for growth in digital economies. I have a hunch that the former may never exist without the latter. Anyone agree?