Volume 4, Issue 1
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A Team Boston Newsletter
| January, 2001 Volume 4, Issue 1 _______________________ |
A Team Boston Newsletter |
| From Information to
Innovation: The Pace Quickens. |
From Information to Innovation.. Cont 2 From IPOs to Management and Marketing 3 From IPOs to Management
|
We will focus the first
issue of the 2001 Sun as we have the past several years; on trends that may effect our
lives and businesses. Our sources include, the Trend Letter, The Economist, Insight for
the Future, Federal Reserve Bank and Celera Genomics. Computing Power Will Lower Costs of Production and Operations Already, automobiles contain more commuting power than the multimillion-dollar mainframe computers used in the Apollo space program. More and cheaper processing power enables companies to be more competitive as the timeline from product inception to distribution collapses. Computers accelerate processes in both old – and new-economy industries. For example, in 1991, the cost of oil discovery was nearly $10 a barrel. Today, those costs have plummeted to $1 a barrel with 3D seismic exploration technology. Next year, computing power will expand again with a corresponding reduction in costs. Capacity and Speed of Communications Expand, Costs Drop Similarly, the capacity and speed of communications networks is expanding exponentially even as costs plummet. Thirty years ago it would have cost $187 to transmit the Encyclopedia Britannica |
across the United States via telephone lines. Today,
someone who was so inclined could transmit the entire contents of the Library of Congress
as an electronic data file for $40. As bandwidth expands, capacity expands and costs will
continue to fall. In just a few years, international calls will be free.
Telecommunications companies will make money on bundling data-transmission services by
time of day, level of urgency and need for translation. The Economist reminds us that according to Metcalfe’s Law (named for Robert Metcalfe, a pioneer in computer networking): "The value of a network grows roughly in line with the square number of users." Every Person Will be Within a Few Miles of an Internet Connection The reach of the world Wide Web now extends to every corner of the globe. In five years, every person on Earth will be within a few miles of an Internet connection, introducing greater economic opportunity for the world’s most isolated regions. As the speed with which information travels accelerates, so will the pace of economic development. Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, asserts that information technology amplifies brainpower in the same way that industrial era technology amplified muscle power. |
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