ITC at the World Summit on the Information Society: report of J. Denis Belisle, ITC's Executive Director, at the Multistakeholder Plenary Session of the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva in December 2003.

• Date: 01 October 2003
• Author: Domeisen, Natalie
• Published date: 01 October 2003
• Author: Domeisen, Natalie

The International Trade Centre is proud to report on "The Changing Marketplace: Putting 'E' to Work" and looks forward to contributing further to the Summit process as we move together into the second phase (Tunis, November 2005).

I am here to voice the message of small business, the backbone of most developing countries' economies, as they expressed it in the interactive workshops we organized in partnership with the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, as part of the ICT4D (ICT-for-development) platform.

The workshops brought together business Leaders and export strategy makers from 30 developed and developing countries, to debate how small firms can put "e" to work, to grow their business through exports.

Companies said that they know that information and communications technologies (ICTs) can help them become more competitive. What they wanted to know was how to put "e" to work. These firms do not have the choice to invest in "e" or not. For them to survive in tomorrow's business landscape, they must use ICTs.

To keep the digital gap from widening, developing...