Directors of Global Companies Announce Largest Investments in Their Customers

At the business-technical conference IBM Forum, the results of a survey conducted by the corporation among managers of global companies were presented today, and Ivan Vidaković, director of IBM Croatia, introduced the scientific research conducted by the corporation.

Dutchman Cormac Petit from IBM’s Institute for Business Value in Amsterdam announced the results of IBM’s global study on executives ‘Enterprise of the Future’, which shows that as many as 83 percent of surveyed executives expect significant changes in the business future, a significant increase of 28 percent in just two years. As the main source of change, executives cite their customers, among whom they identify two groups: ‘information omnivores’ as those who decide on purchases after careful and exhaustive searches for product facts, and ‘socially conscious customers’ for whom it is important how green the company operates and how socially responsible it is. The surveyed directors, numbering 1,130 across 40 countries and 32 sectors of the economy, stated that they will therefore invest the most in customers.

Ivan Vidaković, director of IBM Croatia, in his lecture, as he said, in a quick overview, decided to present the research areas that the corporation he works for, the largest research company in the world, is engaged in.
Vidaković began with a definition of nanotechnology, which deals with the production and manipulation of things in the space between 1 and 100 nanometers, comparing it to his presentation in Rovinj in 2003, when the lower limit of nanotechnology was 100 nanometers. He recalled IBM’s recent announcement about the development of a two-nanometer thick chip prototype and the fact that IBM measured that a force of 17 piconewtons is required to lift a cobalt atom from the surface of copper.

He pointed out the incredible possibilities offered by nanotechnology machines small enough to heal a red blood cell or by nanotubes that prevent electron scattering in electronic circuits, thus preventing the heating caused by it, which is currently a brake on even faster chips. He showed the researchers’ idea of synthetic peptides that create a scaffold to which stem cells adhere and are thus ‘transferred’ to the damage site, allowing severed nerves to regenerate within 24 hours.

He warned that in our country, scientists are building their own computer clusters instead of purchasing a ready-made IBM supercomputer, which even Turkey recently afforded, thus using their time and abilities more effectively for research with that computer rather than assembling it. – Unfortunately, all of the Government’s absorptive capacity is now focused on negotiations with the EU. I would like changes, and they will have to come, not to be initiated from the outside, through globalization, but from within – said Vidaković about the situation in Croatia and our economy, emphasizing that the most important investments for Croatia are in three areas: education, education, and education. (Igor Škevin)