The Building of a New Business Ecosystem: Sustaining National Competitive Advantage Through Electronic Commerce

Despite the high level of interest in the role of governments in building national information infrastructure (NII) as a source of competitive advantage, it is still not clear how major information technology initiatives can help leverage national economies into the global marketplace. In light of the recent rollout of one of the world's largest electronic commerce initiatives, we examine the role of private–public partnerships in the success of such initiative in Hong Kong. Furthermore, we trace the 3 stages of the pro-ject—development, implementation, and competitive entrenchment—to identify the difficulties and challenges encountered and how these were overcome. By drawing some comparisons with the Singapore approach, we identify the kind of government involvement appropriate to spur on national competitiveness. We show that in building the NII, the dual aspects of private-sector leadership and government involvement are mutually reinforcing. Government intervention is necessary in creating the initial supply push, whereas the demand pull engendered by the market is critical for lever-aging the NII as a platform for national competitiveness. The ramification of the study for other countries is discussed.