ICT Training -- Key to Closing Digital Divide among Businesses: Case of SMEs in Central California.

Digital Divide among businesses is defined as disparity between effective uses of ICT for productivity gains. SMEs are for most part on the wrong side of this Divide with lack of funds and access to ICT as the most quoted reason for falling behind big corporations. Number of specific business processes supported by ICT based solutions is used here as an innovative measure of ICT advancement within a small business. We have looked in this study at over 600 SMEs of Central California and proved that number one barrier to use of ICT is lack of education and training and not lack of funds for hardware and software. Study of additional sample of over 160 SMEs shows that the culture and format of ICT training is only partially impacted by the size of business. Similarly, number of ICT supported business processes is not significantly correlated with quantity and format of training and education provided by the management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]