All wired up
Information technology is all around us — but how does it really change the way we do business? Erik Brynjolfsson, the Schussel Family Professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, explores this question in his new book, "Wired for Innovation," written along with Adam Saunders, a lecturer at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Q. What effects does information technology have on the economy? A. Since about 1995, the U.S. economy has experienced a productivity resurgence. The consensus among economists is that the lion's share of that is due to information technology. In the book and my research we focus specifically not on how IT is by itself is changing productivity, by rather by the way that IT is leading to complementary innovations. Some manufacturing companies have re-thought the whole production process, changed the way they link to their suppliers, and eliminated inventory. Other sectors like...