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The Great Atlantic Rift

In the last several months I was actively involved in the academic research interactions and consulting projects at several European countries. Without going into much details, I was somewhat taken aback by many presentations and publications at various meetings and conferences that I had attended on the subject of ecommerce and efinance.

My own consulting and academic experience on the both sides of the Atlantic has led me to a conclusion that there was a very substantial cultural gap among them. Especially disturbing was the obvious lack of European academic and industrial interest towards the vibrant developments and discussions that have taken place in the North America -- where, based on the objective stats, most of the global ecommerce/ebanking advanced development is being advanced. The critical issues of profitability and sustainability of ecommerce/ebanking initiatives are often neglected in favor of purely technical considerations, which are, by definition, mostly transitory in the corporate development and survival.

As well, most of the academic articles on the subjects covered by JIBC that I was recently introduced to in Europe, were frankly quite parochial, either covering the subjects that are already well advanced in the North American sources or that limit themselves to the exclusive citation of academic publications of the European origin. Regretfully, in my view, such obsolescence generally lowers the level of European academic research.

I personally don’t know that many examples of sustainable global online enterprise build on the models discussed/advanced by the European academics and have not seen serious discussion of whether it is feasible to organize a profitable and sustainable global enterprise outside of the US.

In my view, the ecommerce action axis is currently positioned between US and China, with certain participation of the UK, India and Brazil economies (and perhaps Israel, being a well integrated part of the US New Economy); most of other new economic geographies are either less globally significant (Australia, Canada, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany); with many others perhaps being internationally marginal.

France's pioneering and well state-defended Minitel initiative is itself a classical case study proving that however advanced and successful on its own, no regional initiative can survive onslaught of the global Internet commerce, as profitability and sustainability can only be meaningful in the international environment.

I wonder whether the readers of JIBC have similar experience in the transatlantic duality of the academic research in ecommerce/ebanking. Write to me whether you agree -- or see the state of the academic art entirely differently.

Again, I am asking each and every one of you, our readers and subscribers, to email JIBC to at least 3 of your colleagues, friends and discussion groups that you are participating at, and recommend that they also subscribe. Please share information about JIBC articles with the Internet community and suggest to us new ways to promote JIBC among academics and professionals from around the globe.

As well, I am challenging all the current and past authors and editors to email your own articles -- along with the rest of JIBC edition -- to at least 10 of your peers and colleagues in academia, government and industry. Make sure that they are well aware of your articles and the Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce. Recommend that they also subscribe to email editions. After all, we send it around just 3-4 times a year.

A special appeal to ecommerce/ebusiness students to pass a word about JIBC to your professors and classmates and, more important, to ask them to supply new articles and tell everybody to subscribe.

Please contact us with the suggestion of how to submit information on JIBC to other leading search engines and academic reference publications. Also, if you notice publications referring to JIBC articles, please let us know.

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