Wired for Innovation: How Information Technology Is Reshaping the Economy

Two experts on the information economy explore the true economic value of technology and innovation.

A wave of business innovation is driving the productivity resurgence in the U.S. economy. In Wired for Innovation, Erik Brynjolfsson and Adam Saunders describe how information technology directly or indirectly created this productivity explosion, reversing decades of slow growth. They argue that the companies with the highest level of returns to their technology investment are doing more than just buying technology; they are inventing new forms of organizational capital to become digital organizations. These innovations include a cluster of organizational and business-process changes, including broader sharing of information, decentralized decision-making, linking pay and promotions to performance, pruning of non-core products and processes, and greater investments in training and education.

Innovation continues through booms and busts. This book provides an essential guide for policy makers and economists who need to understand how information technology is transforming the economy and how it will create value in the coming decade.

Erik Brynjolfsson, Schussel Family Professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, is the coeditor of Understanding the Digital Economy: Data, Tools, and Research (MIT Press).

Adam Saunders is Assistant Professor in the Management Information Systems Division of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.