Technology Leader of the Year: John E. Davies – A scientist expanding virtual horizons

By Francine Brevetti

SAN FRANCISCO — When John E. Davies has a goal, he dives right in. Over the past five years, the general manager of Intel’s World Ahead program has traveled to 98 nations on a corporate mission to bring broadband technology to developing countries. Latin America figures heavily on his list.
Industrialized countries boast one computer for every student. In Latin America the average is just one for every five. The disparity is just as stark among households with computers and home broadband access. In more developed countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 70 percent of households have computers and broadband access; a mere 6 percent of homes in Latin America are in this category.
“We’ll do anything we can to boost these indicators and focus our programs on them,” said Davies, an Intel veteran who helped found the company’s World Ahead program in 2005.
The program combines Intel’s philanthropic impulses with the business acumen that made the Santa Clara-headquartered chipmaker the largest in the world. To bring computer and broadband technology to the next billion people, the technology giant promotes enhancing the digital infrastructure through projects such as building wireless networks. Under World Ahead, Intel — and often Davies himself — lobbies governments, development agencies and private industry to adopt new technology in order to realize economic progress.
“It’s an amazing job,” Davies said.
“I’m 60 now, and whereas people my age retire to do philanthropy or do thus and so, I find I can do bigger things in a wider area with Intel’s massive resources,” said Davies. He is also vice president of sales and marketing and Intel’s de facto corporate ambassador, representing the company at gatherings like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I’m helping countries help people, and it helps our business also. I am blessed,” Davies said.
He is also driven. Hailing from what the native Englishman describes as a rough neighborhood in East London, he earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the Imperial College at London University. While pursuing a doctorate in solid-state physics, also at London University, he moonlighted as lab technician, “cooking crystals,” to support his wife, then expecting their twin daughters. Following stints as a post-doctoral research fellow with IBM and a development engineer with Philips Electronics, both in Britain, Davies joined Intel in 1978. He has held a variety of positions over his nearly three decades with the company, including vice president and general manager of Intel Asia Pacific, based in Hong Kong.
Davies takes a steady, long-term approach to his work, as befits the champion swimmer who successfully swam the 21-mile English Channel in 1990. He won second place for six consecutive years, from 1988 to 1994 in the 1.5-mile swim across San Francisco Bay from Alcatraz Island to the city. Davies remains a dedicated swimmer, seeking out hotel pools to offset his fear that thrombosis might set in from his extensive flying. He travels as much as three weeks out of the month.
World Ahead initiatives in Latin America have ranged from equipping farmers in Colombia with broadband so they can check crop prices around the world and keep tabs on their lines of supply to bringing telemedicine to a remote town in the Brazilian Amazon, where a skin biopsy can be diagnosed virtually.
World Ahead emphasizes training teachers so they are qualified to educate students to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. When Telecom Argentina announced it wanted to equip every child and teacher with a computer, Intel stepped in with its support programs.
“Intel invests $100 million a year in education,” Davies said. The long-term result is enabling developing countries to purchase computers, typically ones operating with Intel microprocessors.
Davies’ work in Guatemala illustrates the strategy. Until three years ago, only one-fourth of Guatemala’s 80,000 teachers had personal computers. World Ahead wanted to equip and train the country’s teachers, but neither the teachers nor the school systems had the money to purchase individual PCs. The Intel team first proposed that the government deduct the price of a PC from teachers’ paychecks, but that was still too high.
“We realized that the government’s 17 percent value-added tax added about $100 to each computer. So we asked the government to look at that,” Davies said.
Guatemalan authorities ultimately issued a voucher to help cover the cost of a personal computer. Within nine months, almost every teacher owned a laptop. World Ahead donated a Spanish-language math/science portal so the schools could design their own program. Guatemala translated the portal into Mayan.
Davies said Intel worked with the Colombian government to eliminate a 16 percent VAT on computers in 2007. Sales skyrocketed, increasing by 60 percent in the first three months. The burgeoning number of computer owners spurred Internet usage., Davies said. The Colombian government collected more from a modest monthly tax on Internet service than it had lost in VAT, he said.
The relative cost of broadband is another hurdle that Intel addresses via World Ahead. In developed countries, broadband costs comprise just 1 percent of income, on average. In the developing world, access is prohibitively expensive, about 12 percent of the average take-home pay of Brazilians, for example. Davies and his team are working with the Brazilian government to lower Internet taxes there.
Davies predicted that broadband penetration would more than double over the next five years, reaching 30 percent of the Latin America’s population. Wireless broadband “will mimic the revolution with cell phones that are now so cheap that every consumer in Africa, Asia and Latin America can have one,” he said.
For the moment, Davies will remain a frequent flier to the region. “It’s my goal to be attuned to the market to understand what people at long distances need,” he said.