engleski

Business in New economy – Challenges for Croatian small and medium enterprises

The term "New Economy" has been gaining currency since the mid-1990s. Numerous synonyms - "Digital Economy", "Networked Economy", "Internet Economy", "Knowledge Economy" which strongly suggest that the "new" and "old" economies are not new and old economic sectors, but rather areas to which different economic rules apply (Neumark and Reed, 2002). In principle it is a market model based on digital networks in which special properties of digitized goods play a central role. Strictly speaking, many rules are not necessarily new ; what is new is the fact that they are spreading to an ever-increasing proportion of economic activity at an unprecedented rate of speed. Unlike material goods, information can be transferred, sold, given away and exchanged without leaving the hands of their original owner. Bits and ideas can be sold and, at the same time, kept: the original and the copy are indistinguishable. Information products need to be developed only once to be usable by everyone - they can be distributed a million-fold over computer networks with practically no additional effort. Intangible goods have only development costs. The marginal costs for copying and distribution of digital knowledge are practically null.

industrial economy; new knowledge economy; small and medium enterprises

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