GUILLERMO WECHSLER

October 19, 2006

Technology in Service Growth

During the last thirty years, services have been continuously increasing their share of the world's GDP. At the beginning of the seventies, services accounted for 53% of the global output. Today, services exceed 70% of the global output (World Bank 2004). Many IT innovations have modified the business landscape to propel this explosion of services.

The PC emerged in the late seventies; LAN appeared in the eighties; the Internet erupted with formidable force in the nineties; and we have the collaborative Open Source practices of software development not only running the vast majority of the Internet servers and key applications in the Corporate world, but also influencing the style in which people work together in any sphere of activity.

Technology that expands the capacity of Networking in Networked Networks (NNN) is at the essence of the Service explosive growth.

In the middle of all these changing trends, there are two important issues to notice. First, we do not have an understanding of service beyond the traditional economic theory that articulates it as the “intangible benefit.” Second, notions such as networking, networks, and networked are articulated in multiple ways and in general, in a vague and metaphorical fashion.