BUSINESS | A few years back, Jordan was talking about becoming a knowledge economy. Ahmad Humeid follows up on the state of affairs of Jordan’s tech industry.
It is only a few years back that IT was the big news in Jordan. We started imagining a future were Jordan becomes the Ireland of the Middle East, with thriving, knowledge-based and R&D driven companies, popping up all over the country. Global IT companies like Intel, Cisco and Microsoft would establish development centers filled with young, bright Jordanian engineers. Our economy, we envisioned, would be a knowledge economy.
The question is: where is that IT focus today?
In the past two years, the economy’s attention has clearly shifted to things that traditional business people can understand far more easily: buying and selling land in Jordan’s skyrocketing real estate market, planning and building big hotel complexes, shopping malls and skyscrapers, not to forget trading stocks. The year 2005 was phenomenal in that respect. Full page ads promoting new real estate projects and future vision have become the norm.
So what about our IT industry? Well, in fact it might be doing quite well. But it has clearly lost its marketing steam and has settled to a business-as-usual mode.
The telecom sector is growing and diversifying with vigour. Jordan has the advantage of being the first fully liberalized telecom market in the region. While in 2005 we have only seen glimpses of what this can bring (like falling international calling costs), in 2006 we will probably see more exciting competition between the incumbents and the new entrants into the market in the areas of voice communication, high speed internet access and other, next generation services. We might even see Jordanian telecoms invest regionally. Jordan Telecom has already announced that it would be interested in regional deals.
The software companies don’t seem to be doing so bad either. Maybe they have not achieved the lofty revenue figures we were dreaming about five years ago, but many of them are growing and expanding their markets. There are many untold success stories of Jordanian IT companies doing business in the Gulf, Europe and the US.
On the entrepreneurial level, new companies are being formed and young companies are finding ways to grow. For example, Jordan is playing a significant role in the growth of Arab blogging, a development that mirrors some Jordanian pioneering efforts in the mid to late 90’s.
So, is the industry in a good shape? The answer entirely depends on what ‘good’ means. The industry clearly over-hyped itself a few years ago, which wasn’t without its benefits. Regionally, Jordan is on the IT map because of the good work that some companies have done coupled with the official support and the promotional effort that were carried out.
Today, the Jordanian IT industry seems quieter. We’re back to our traditional mode of the Jordanian engineer working silently and, hopefully, diligently. The industry might be in a ‘good’ shape from that perspective.
Maybe it’s also a good thing that the hype has died down. But it needs to be replaced by rational, truthful marketing rather than silence and indifference. The industry should not be overly content with the current status quo, forgetting that that the world and the region around us are not sitting silent.
Have Jordanian companies paid enough attention to the new web 2.0 ‘bubble’ that is forming in the US? Have we looked into the potential of regional e-commerce, now that a new generation has grown up with the net and satellite TV in front of their eyes and credit cards in their pockets? Have Jordanian companies realized the importance of investment in research and development to be able to produce lasting value?
And, most importantly, has the industry found a mechanism to talk about itself in an assertive, promotional and strategic manner? This raises questions about the role of the Information Technology Association of Jordan (int@j) in the future. The organization is currently without a CEO, which is not a good sign.
The vision for Jordan’s knowledge economy has to be realistically redefined and brought to life as a strategic direction that, in the long term, will turn out as being more important to the country that the current real estate mania.
The Jordanian tech industry has to find a new voice. Ambition to do great things has to be balanced with straight talk about actual achievements (we’ve seen enough ‘futuristic’ flashy 3D animations at IT conferences). Business suits have to be balanced with geeky t-shirts (the t-shirt people are the real innovators). In short, we need to press that ‘refresh’ button.
Comments
2 responses to “Has Jordan lost its IT focus?”
I can’t speak for everyone in the Jordan IT sector simply because I honestly can’t relate to what they do. I can only speak from my own experience and tell you that sucess is not attained by waiting for the government to pick it and and hand it to us.
The best thing the government can do is remove the obstacles that stand in the way of innovation and creativity; like outdated IT professors and college curricula. No IT professor should be allowed to teach unless he’s had 10 years of working experience in the industry (Internet cafe admin & computer hardware sales should not be counted)
Alot of professors are streight “A” students who could not get a job in the real world or decided to choose the easy path. Students’ creativity and innovation are being oppressed every day by such people.
To get a good picture about the size of the tragedy, simply consider this: “Some non IT-graduates are able to find work as programmers or web developers, others are starting IT companies, while IT graduates are applying for graphic/web design jobs”
I fully agree to the above two postings except “Some non IT-graduates are able to find work as programmers or web developers, others are starting IT companies, while IT graduates are applying for graphic/web design jobs” as I see it normal in IT industry in all parts of the world. Successful IT companies are not run by hardcore programmers, and now a days, designing multimedia is part of IT. like Flash has full scripting, CSS, etc all needs programmers not print media or other media designers.