BAIA ITALIA event in Milano

We're happy to announce a new BAIA ITALIA event. This event will be in Milano, Italy: "E-commerce, via a nuova imprenditorialita'?" (E-commerce: a way to new entrepreneurial activity?)

It will be on June 18:00, in a really nice location called "Chiostri dell'Umanitaria", and it will focus on whether electronic commerce can be a platform for a new wave of entrepreneurial activity in Italy. Technology providers and industry experts will come together for this interesting round table.

In Silicon Valley there are lots of businesses that used e-commerce and their first (and sometimes only) sales channel. With low economic and phisical barriers to entry, e-commerce-based businesses can get up and running in virtually no time, and log their first sale as quickly as they can get a good product (or service) out the door and build some buzz around it.

In Italy, however, e-commerce is lagging behind. And big time too! Total online sales, excluding travel, were only about 4 billion dollars in 2007, compared to around $166 billion in the US. Considering that Italy's economy (GDP ~$1.8 trillion in 2007) is about 13% of the US economy (~$13,9 trillion in 2007), Italy's e-commerce sales are about 1/5 of what they could be.

That is: e-commerce sales in Italy should grow 5-fold to represent a portion of the economy that's comparable to the US.

There are many reasons why e-commerce has not taken off in Italy. At the BAIA event, we will focus on answering this question: will new companies see e-commerce as a way to quickly get going? Will it trigger the birth of all sorts of new businesses, just like it has done in the US, and especially in California?

Join us for this interesting discussion!