The purpose of this research is to examine the American information-technology industry from a management standpoint. The plan of the research will be to set forth a status report on the current picture of the industry and then to discuss the kinds of management-related challenges and opportunities that it faces as the twenty-first century begins to unfold, with a view toward forecasting possible lines of development.
Although in a very broad sense the origin of the U.S. information-technology industry can be dated from the invention of the transistor in 1947, the critical mass of the industry was shaped in the 1980s with the introduction of personal-computer technology to the mass market. Since the 1980s, historically unprecedented technological innovation has occurred in the information industry that has had influence not only within the high-tech industry itself but also across industries that historically have been associated with very little technology. Today, the IT industry is said to comprise four industrial categories: hardware, software and related services, communications equipment, and communications services, including cable TV and telephone services (CEA, 2001). All of these industrial segments are technology driven, and none would be constituted today as it is but for high technology.
Technological innovation continues apace, but multiple (and multiply vexed) fronts present themselves because it is by no means clear whether the structure of the industry is equal to the task of either absorbing or exploiting such innovation. That is, the technology is far ahead of the industry, and whether the industry, which is an element of American enterprise occupied and managed by human beings, can hold its own as such an element is a matter of some doubt.
In the background of reports on the status of the information-technology industry is a germane but not infrequently overlooked fact: that the enormous technical strides in...