Profound changes have altered the U.S. national information technology (IT) research and development (R&D) ecosystem during the 1995-2007 period that is the focus on this report. The forces of globalization have shaken the foundations of the product, labor, and financial markets of the IT industry. They have created tremendous opportunity, but they also mean that the United States will have to work even harder to remain the global leader in IT R&D. R&D funding models, in both academic and industrial environments, have also evolved. Finally, the nature of the employer-employee relationship has continued to change across most sectors, but perhaps in a deeper way in the IT industry than anywhere else.
As world markets such as those of India, China, and Eastern Europe open, competition for information technology workers has become global, with many U.S. companies looking the world over for the best talent, in the right place, at the right price. Most U.S.-based technology companies are now global from birth, driving innovation through collaborations with foreign technologists. For example, Figure 4.1 shows the significant increase from 1990 to 2005 in joint patenting by Silicon Valley inventors working with global teams. Figure 4.1 and Box 4.1 illustrate the global nature of IT innovation and sourcing.
Fueling the trend toward global sourcing are significant advances in telecommunications and networking technologies, as well as the evolu-
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4
A Globalized, Dynamic Information
Technology R&D Ecosystem
Profound changes have altered the U.S. national information technol-
ogy (IT) research and development (R&D) ecosystem during the 1995-
2007 period that is the focus on this report. The forces of globalization
have shaken the foundations of the product, labor, and financial markets
of the IT industry. They have created tremendous opportunity, but they
also mean that the United States will have to work even harder to remain
the global leader in IT R&D. R&D funding models, in both academic and
industrial environments, have also evolved. Finally, the nature of the
employer-employee relationship has continued to change across most sec-
tors, but perhaps in a deeper way in the IT industry than anywhere else.
THE gLOBALIzATION OF PRODUCT AND LABOR MARKETS
As world markets such as those of India, China, and Eastern Europe
open, competition for information technology workers has become global,
with many U.S. companies looking the world over for the best talent, in
the right place, at the right price. Most U.S.-based technology companies
are now global from birth, driving innovation through collaborations
with foreign technologists. For example, Figure 4.1 shows the significant
increase from 1990 to 2005 in joint patenting by Silicon Valley inventors
working with global teams. Figure 4.1 and Box 4.1 illustrate the global
nature of IT innovation and sourcing.
Fueling the trend toward global sourcing are significant advances in
telecommunications and networking technologies, as well as the evolu-
0
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0
A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
700
600 2000-2005
Number of Patents
500
1995-1999
400
1990-1994
300
200
100
0
Taiwan Israel Japan Singapore South Germany China India Finland
Korea
FIGURE 4.1 Foreign co-inventors listed on patents with Silicon Valley inventors,
1990-2005. SOURCE: AnnaLee Saxenian, University of California, Berkeley, pre-
Figure 4-1.eps
sentation to the committee, Mountain View, Calif., February 23, 2007. Based on data
needs shades for shapes
analysis conducted by Collaborative Economics, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., 2007.
tion of work and business processes. One powerful trend is for firms to
consider what work they should retain internally and what they should
purchase from outside vendors. The decision to purchase from an outside
vendor work that was formerly done internally is termed outsourcing.
The other powerful trend is to scan the globe to decide where specific
work processes should be undertaken. Often, firms are deciding that work
can be done more efficiently and effectively in nations outside the United
States. Of course, multinational firms have a long history of establish-
ing subsidiaries abroad. What has changed in the past four decades is
the increasing movement of work to developing nations. This practice
is referred to as offshoring. More recently, there has been an upsurge in
offshore outsourcing. Finally, this offshoring initially was for the manufac-
ture of goods, but recently it has extended to the production of software
and IT services.1
The Offshoring of U.S. IT jobs
According to a recent study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the
offshoring of work is more prevalent in the IT sector than it is in any of
the other U.S. industry sectors studied. Published in 2005, the report esti-
mated that by 2008, U.S. firms would offshore 18 percent of their demand
for high-wage workers in the packaged-software sector and 13 percent
1Ron Hira and Anil Hira, Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Oerseas and
What Can Be Done About It, AMACOM, New York, N.Y., 2005.
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08 ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
Box 4.1
iPod and iTunes: Internationalization
of Design and Implementation
The Apple iPod is a digital music player with a highly stylized industrial design
and an easy-to-use click-wheel user interface. It was not the first media player, but
it is certainly the most commercially successful. The first model was announced
on october 2001. By April 2007, over 100 million had been sold. As an example
of the rapid design cycle of modern consumer products, five generations have
been launched in only 6 years: the iPod, iPod mini, iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and
video iPod.
The iPod plays audio and video media in standard formats, such as the open
standards MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) and Apple proprietary formats.
A key element of Apple’s success is the platform which it developed for digital
media that encompassed its online store, iTunes. iTunes was introduced in April
2003 to sell individual songs at the price of $0.99 each. iTunes Media is encoded
using Apple’s AAC format with additional levels of encryption. The representation
and its associated digital rights management system make it possible to authorize
up to five computers and an unlimited number of iPods to play the files. An unlim-
ited number of audio compact disks can be produced from the digital representa-
tion, but at a loss in quality.
The iPod offers an interesting case study in the internationalization of prod-
uct design and implementation.1 For the fifth-generation video iPod, among the
most costly components are those contributed by companies headquartered in
Japan (Toshiba, which supplies the hard drive), Korea (Samsung Electronics,
which supplies the flash memory), and the United States (Broadcom Corpora-
tion, which supplies the multimedia processor). These components are in turn
manufactured around the globe—in China (hard drive), in Taiwan or Singapore
(media processor), and in Korea (the memory). The device is assembled by the
Taiwanese firm Inventec Corporation in Mainland China. The analysis by Linden,
Kraemer, and Dedrick indicates that out of a suggested retail price of $299, the
cost of all components of the iPod is $144. of the $155 price difference, $80 ac-
crues to Apple and $75 to the distributor and retailer. Apple’s value is the single
largest component and is larger than that associated with the most expensive
physical component, Toshiba’s hard drive. This value of Apple represents the
company’s considerable competitive advantage in product conception, design,
and marketing. Apple is amply compensated for the innovation that the firm has
embedded in the product. The portion captured by U.S. firms—design, distribu-
tion, and sales—exceeds the value of its manufactured components. Although to
a large extent the iPod is not manufactured in the United States, it is designed
and sold here, and U.S. firms do quite well in the bargain.
1See G. Linden, K. Kraemer, and J. Dedrick, “Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation
System? The Case of Apple’s iPod,” Personal Computing Industry Center, University of Cali-
fornia, Irvine, June 2007.
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
in IT services.2 The McKinsey study used data from the U.S. Department
of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as global company-level
data, to derive a microeconomic picture of the extent of offshoring that
had occurred and was expected to occur. The McKinsey study reported
that the theoretical maximum global resourcing for packaged software
and IT services represents from 44 to 48 percent of the industry’s total
employment. However, it is estimated that only 13 to 18 percent would
be offshored, owing to a number of barriers ranging from management
attitudes, to business process suitability, to lack of sufficient scale, to intel-
lectual property protection.3
Another study, by Alan S. Blinder, also uses the Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics data, devising a model that categorizes jobs into two groups—those
that can be personally delivered (e.g., medical care, child care, and so
forth) and those that can be “impersonally” delivered—that is, the job
can be delivered to the end user electronically over long distances with
little or no degradation in quality (for example, by call center operators). 4
Blinder’s study places all IT jobs in offshorable categories and concludes
that the percentage of offshorable IT jobs is roughly twice that estimated
by the McKinsey study.5
To fully understand the real impact of offshoring in IT, however, one
must match up the demand for workers with the supply of workers in
the countries to which work is being outsourced. The McKinsey report
concludes that although the potential talent pool in low-wage companies
is large and growing rapidly, only 17 percent of the potential engineering
talent supply is suited for work with international companies.6 The report
explains the reasons for its conclusion, which was based on interviews with
83 human resource managers in multinational companies: the reasons are
2McKinsey Global Institute, The Emerging Global Labor Market, June 2005, available at
http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/emerginggloballabormarket/index.asp; ac-
cessed August 27, 2007.
3As this report was being prepared for publication, a continued weakening of the U.S.
currency had increased the cost of goods and services sourced from abroad. Such a trend
decreases the benefits of outsourcing and offshoring for U.S. firms.
4Alan S. Blinder, how Many U.S. Jobs Might Be Offshorable?, Center for Economic Policy
Studies [CEPS] Working Paper No. 142, CEPS, Princeton University, March 2007, available
at www.princeton.edu/~blinder/papers/07ceps142.pdf.
5The notion that all IT jobs can be done remotely from the consumer and/or the core
business was questioned by the committee. Many IT jobs are critical to the successful imple-
mentation of a business and/or are central to a firm’s competitive differentiation. Further,
IT R&D also involves work by large teams, who collaborate to create new platforms or
services.
6Notice that the McKinsey study’s conclusion is a point estimate. It is likely, even ex-
tremely likely, that nations and workers will try to improve their education and capabilities
so that they can participate in the global economy, because in many of these nations this
will ensure higher incomes.
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0 ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
dispersion of the labor force, domestic competition for talent, and indi-
vidual limitations (e.g., inadequate language skills, limited practical skills,
lack of cultural fit, inability to work on teams, and lower educational attain-
ment) as well as considerable scarcity of middle-management skills.
This shortage of qualified staff is becoming a headache, according to a
recent survey conducted by The Economist. According to the 600 executives
of multinational companies that were surveyed, the shortage of qualified
staff ranked as their biggest concern in China, second in Japan (after cul-
tural differences), and fourth in India (after problems with infrastructure,
bureaucracy, and wage inflation). The Economist goes on to say:
Technical skills, particularly in information technology, are lacking in
many parts of the region, even India. One of the main concerns is that
there are not enough skilled graduates to fill all the jobs being created in
a vibrant sector. Nasscom, which represents India’s software companies,
has estimated that there could be a shortfall of 500,000 IT professionals
by 2010. This means companies recruiting at job fairs in India are having
to make lucrative offers to capture the most promising students. Even a
junior software engineer can expect to take home $45,000/year. 7
A high turnover rate also helps to drive up wage costs.
The same article in The Economist reminds readers how supply and
demand in labor markets must equalize through wages, and that the
transfer of IT jobs from countries such as the United States to countries
such as India and China, while politically and socially alarming, tends
to be an overstated and self-regulating phenomenon. According to the
McKinsey study, for IT and engineering-based services, if the United
States and the United Kingdom continue at their current rate to concen-
trate their activities in India, China, and the Philippines, the U.S. and U.K.
demand for engineers will fully absorb the supply of suitable engineers
in India, China, and the Philippines by 2011.8
The U.S. Workforce and the global IT Industry
Information technology professionals play an important role beyond
the research and development organizations of technology vendors.
7“Capturing Talent,” The Economist, August 16, 2007, available at http://www.economist.
com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9645045; accessed August 27, 2007. See Rafiq
Dossani, India Arriing: how This Economic Powerhouse Is Redefining Global Business, Ameri-
can Management Association, New York, N.Y., 2007, for a discussion of how institutions of
higher education in India are responding to this shortage.
8McKinsey Global Institute, The Emerging Global Labor Market, June 2005, available at
http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/emerginggloballabormarket/index.asp; ac-
cessed August 27, 2007.
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
Because IT is transforming the foundational business processes of all
corporations, IT professionals are increasingly critical to corporations
in diverse sectors, such as retailing, hospitality, finance, and pharma-
ceuticals. Outside corporate walls, IT professionals are also at work in
entrepreneurial and small businesses, as well as creating the next wave of
software services through technologies such as the Web 2.0 infrastructure.
Many are independent consultants.
IT professionals work on a wide variety of challenging technical proj-
ects, ranging from research into new scientific frontiers such as high
performance computing, speech recognition technology, sensors or radio-
frequency identification to new computing platform development and
corporate business re-engineering (integrating technology to improve
productivity significantly). A recent report from market research firm
Forrester Research points to the sophistication of the IT professional job
in today’s enterprise.9 According to Forrester, IT professionals can follow
a variety of career paths—sourcing, management, innovation, architec-
ture—each of which requires a combination of relationship-management,
not just project-management, skills and activities.
Continued Strong Demand for IT Workers
According to data collected by the U.S. Department of Commerce,
there are more professional IT workers in the United States today than
ever before; “IT professional workers” in this case are defined as computer
support specialists; computer programmers; computer systems analysts;
computer software engineers; applications, computer, and information
systems managers; computer software engineers; systems software, net-
work, and computer systems administrators; all other computer spe-
cialists; network systems and data communications analysts; database
administrators; computer hardware engineers; computer and information
scientists; and computing researchers. In fact, a recent report on globaliza-
tion and the offshoring of software states:10
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, despite a sig-
nificant increase in offshoring over the past five years, more IT jobs are
available today in the US than at the height of the dot.com boom. More-
over, IT jobs are predicted to be among the fastest-growing occupations
over the next decade.
9Lorie M. Orlov, Samuel Bright, and Lauren Sessions, Is There a Career Future in Enterprise
IT? Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass., August 10, 2006.
10Association for Computing Machinery Job Migration Task Force, Globalization and Off-
shoring of Software: A Report of the ACM Job Migration Task Force, W. Aspray, F. Mayadas, and
M. Vardi, eds., Association for Computing Machinery, New York, N.Y., 2006.
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
A recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that contains occu-
pational employment projections through 2016 states:
Computer and mathematical science occupations are projected to add
822,000 jobs—at 24.8 percent, the fastest growth among the eight profes-
sional subgroups. The demand for computer-related occupations will
increase in almost all industries as organizations continue to adopt and
integrate increasingly sophisticated and complex technologies. Growth
will not be as rapid as during the previous decade, however, as the
software industry begins to mature and as routine work is outsourced
overseas. About 291,000—or 35 percent—of all new computer and math-
ematical science jobs are anticipated to be in the computer systems design
and related services industry. The management, scientific, and technical
consulting services industry is projected to add another 86,000 computer
and mathematical science jobs. This expected 93-percent increase is due
to the growing need for consultants to handle issues such as computer
network security.11
The report also states that among all fields of science and engineering,
“computer specialist” is projected to account for 77 percent of all job
growth and 66 percent of all available jobs (which includes both growth
and positions available due to retirement).
Data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) reinforce the picture
of a relatively strong job market for science and engineering graduates,
particularly for computer and information science graduates. According
to NSF’s Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System, the overall
unemployment rate of scientists and engineers in the United States was
2.5 percent in 2006, compared with 3.2 percent in 2003; 2.5 percent is the
lowest rate since the early 1990s. For computer/information scientists, the
overall unemployment rates were 2.5 percent in 2006 (down from 4.0 per-
cent in 2003).12 Also, according to a 2006 survey from NSF, the median sal-
ary level for computer and information science graduates with bachelor’s
degrees was $45,000 (the median for all science and engineering fields was
$39,000); at the master’s level, the median salary was $65,000 (the median
for all science and engineering fields was $56,000).13
11Arlene Dohm and Lynn Shniper, “Occupational Employment Projections to 2016,”
Monthly Labor Reiew, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, D.C., November 2007, pp.
86-125.
12Nirmala Kannankutty, Unemployment Rate of U.S. Scientists and Engineers Drops to Record
Low .% in 00, Science Resources Statistics InfoBrief, NSF 08-305, National Science Foun-
dation, Washington, D.C., March 2008. For electrical/computer hardware engineers, overall
unemployment rates for 2006 were higher than for computer/information scientists, but still
improved: 3.3 percent (down from 5.5 percent in 2003).
13Steven Proudfoot, An Oeriew of Science, Engineering, and health Graduates: 00, NSF-
08-34 (revised), March 2008, available at http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf08304/,
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
Strong Concerns About Sustaining a Strong IT Workforce
Despite the demand, the number of students specifying an intention
to major in computing and information sciences has dropped significantly
in the past 6 years. For example, according to College Board data for 2006,
the number of students indicating on their SAT test a desire to major in
computing and information sciences has dropped by almost 50 percent
since 2001.14 Also according to the College Board, in 2006 the SAT math-
ematics scores (an indicator for success in IT) of those intending to major
in computing and information sciences averaged 478, far lower than the
mathematics scores for those intending to major in other scientific and
mathematical disciplines. These statistics not only point to a sharp decline
in the number of students entering the IT educational pipeline, 15 but also
raise a concern about the skill sets of those attracted to the discipline.
The problem of declining enrollments in the computing disciplines
(as compared with the projected demand) is compounded by the severe
lack of participation of underrepresented groups in IT. Although the
participation of women, minorities, and people with disabilities in other
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields is rising overall,
their participation is especially low, and even declining, in computing. In
2006, women received 59 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, but only 21
percent of computer science degrees.16 African-American and Hispanic
graduates received only 10 percent and 6 percent of 2004 computer sci-
ence degrees, respectively. Women and minorities are even more severely
underrepresented in positions requiring a doctoral degree. Of the 1,189
Ph.D. graduates in computer science or computer engineering in 2005,
only 18 percent were women, and only 38 of the total 1,189 (3 percent)
accessed April 9, 2008. See also Jay Vegoso, “Employment and Salaries of Recent CS Gradu-
ates,” CRA Bulletin, March 25, 2008, available at http://www.cra.org/wp/index.php?p=141;
accessed April 9, 2008.
14College Board, 00 College Bound Seniors: Total Group Profile Report, 2006, available
at http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/
national-report.pdf; accessed February 20, 2007.
15Although the following facts are not necessarily a perfect surrogate for high school stu-
dents’ interest in computer science, it is interesting to note that about 12,000 students in the
class of 2007 took the Computer Science A Advanced Placement (AP) test; about 4,000 took
the more rigorous Computer Science AB test. For comparison, about 14,000 students took
the Art History and French tests; almost 50,000 took the Economics Macro test, and about
28,000 took the Economics Micro test. See College Board, The th Annual AP Report to the Na-
tion, Appendix B, 2008, available at http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/
ap-report-to-the-nation-2008.pdf; accessed April 4, 2008.
16National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System
(00-0), U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2007.
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
were members of underrepresented minorities (African-American, Native
American, or Hispanic).17
The picture is also bleak in the workforce. In 2006, the percentage of
women in management, professional, and related occupations was 50.6
percent, whereas the percentage of women in computer and mathemati-
cal occupations was only 25.6 percent.18
Such low participation has implications beyond the nation’s ability
to create and sustain a sufficiently large IT workforce. Women and minori-
ties can bring different life experiences and perspectives to innovation,
which lead to the design of products and services that benefit a broader
range of people. Such perspectives are especially important, considering
the changing demographics of the U.S. population19 as well as the global
market for IT products and services. If U.S. companies intend to maintain
their competitive advantage both at home and abroad, they must seek the
input of a broader segment of the population to achieve innovation. For
example, a recent analysis of innovation and diversity with respect to IT
patenting revealed that within the United States, mixed-gender invention
teams produced the most frequently cited IT patents—with citation rates
that were 26 to 42 percent higher than the norm.20
How can young people be encouraged to enter computing fields?
One essential ingredient is to ensure a strong national IT educational
pipeline that prepares and encourages all qualified students regardless
of race, gender, or ethnicity to enter the discipline. Without sustained
attention and additional measures to attract and retain all qualified stu-
dents, it will be especially difficult to reverse the negative trends. 21
17S. Zweben, “Record PhD. Production Continues; Undergraduate Enrollments Turning
the Corner,” Computing Research News 19(3):7-22, 2007.
18Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Current Population Surey: household Data: Annual Aer-
ages: 00, BLS, Washington, D.C., Table 11: Employment by detailed occupation, sex, race,
and Hispanic ethnicity, p. 212.
19Council of Economic Advisors for the President’s Initiative on Race, Changing America:
Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being by Race and hispanic Origin, U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington, D.C., September 2007, available at http://www.access.gpo.
gov/eop/ca/index.html.
20Catherine Ashcraft and Anthony Breitzman, Who Inents IT? An Analysis of Women’s Par-
ticipation in Information Technology, National Center for Women and Information Technology,
Boulder, Colo., March 2007.
21For examples of new measures to improve STEM education and strengthen educational
opportunities for students in K-12 (such as ways to retain and reward the most effective
teachers), see “Testimony of William H. Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation and Co-
Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Before the Committee on Science and Technology,
United States House of Representatives, March 12, 2008,” available at http://democrats.
science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2008/Full/12mar/gates_testimony_
12mar08.pdf; accessed March 17, 2008.
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
Concerns About K- IT/Computing Education and Talent Generation
Concerns about talent generation are exacerbated by the state of the
kindergarten-through-grade-12 (K-12) IT/computing education system in
the United States. In its report The New Educational Imperatie: Improing
high School Computer Science Education, the Computer Science Teachers
Association (CSTA) correctly assesses the situation as follows:
Computers have infiltrated all areas of society, and there is now a clear
link between technology, innovation, and economic survival. In light of
this, one would expect a move within our society to support and stan-
dardize computer science education. Yet, no national K–12 computer
science curriculum exists. Lack of leadership on high school computer
science education at the highest legislative and policy levels has resulted
in insufficient funding for classroom instruction, resources, and profes-
sional development for computer science teachers. In addition, complex
and contradictory teacher certification requirements as well as salaries
that cannot possibly compete with industry make it exceedingly difficult
to ensure the availability of exemplary computer science teachers. In the
face of confusing definitions of computer literacy, information fluency,
and the various sub-branches of computer science itself, many schools
have lost sight of the fact that computer science is a scientific discipline
and not a “technology” that simply supports learning in other curricu-
lum areas. Computer science is not about point and click skills. It is a
discipline with a core set of scientific principles that can be applied to
solve complex, real-world problems and promote higher-order thinking.
In short, knowledge of computer science is now as essential to today’s
educated student as any of the traditional sciences.22
In addition to resources, appropriate information technology fluency
objectives for K-12 are needed.23 Recent research by the CSTA shows the
following:
• Only 26 percent of schools require students to take a computer sci-
ence (CS) course;
• Only 40 percent of schools even offer advanced placement (AP)
CS;
• Lack of time in the students’ schedules is the greatest impediment
to students taking computing courses;
22Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), The New Educational Imperatie: Im-
proing high School Computer Science Education, available at http://csta.acm.org/; accessed
August 27, 2007.
23For an early assessment of fluency issues, see National Research Council, Being Fluent
with Information Technology, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1999.
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
• 89 percent of high school computer science teachers say that they
experience a sense of isolation and a lack of collegial support in their
schools and in their districts;
• Most administrators do not understand that computing is a scien-
tific discipline just like physics and biology;
• There is no consistency in CS teacher certification requirements;
• Computing teachers do not receive the professional development
that they need to keep their teaching and technical skills current;
• Administrators, legislators, and congressional committees do not
understand the link between supporting K-12 computing education and
economic and workplace issues.24
Such concerns about the professional IT pipeline and talent pool have
arisen as the U.S. share of worldwide bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in
science and engineering has decreased significantly. The relative decline
in the U.S. global position in science and technology overall is also evi-
dent in the falling U.S. share of global R&D investment, patents, scientific
publications, and researchers (see Table 4.1). If it is to maintain its founda-
tion for competitive strength, the United States faces a long-term need to
attract qualified people to science and technology careers.25
THE gLOBALIzATION OF vENTURE CAPITAL
Until the late 1980s, for all intents and purposes the United States was
the only nation with a vibrant venture capital industry that supported
technology-based start-ups.26 For this reason the United States was in
a privileged position. For an entrepreneur seeking to build a global-
class IT firm, it was necessary to come to the United States—and many
entrepreneurs did. It was in the 1990s that venture capital industries in
Taiwan and Israel began growing, with the Taiwanese venture capitalists
funding manufacturing firms such as Quanta Computer Incorporated and
ASUSTeK Computer; in Silicon Valley they funded start-ups particularly
24Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Curriculum Improvement Task Force,
The New Educational Imperatie: Improing high School Computer Science Education, CSTA, As-
sociation for Computing Machinery, New York, N.Y., February 2005.
25For a business-oriented discussion of the importance of maintaining the STEM pipeline,
see, for example, Testimony of William H. Gates, Chairman, Microsoft Corporation and Co-
Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Before the Committee on Science and Technology,
United States House of Representatives, March 12, 2008, available at http://democrats.
science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2008/Full/12mar/gates_testimony_
12mar08.pdf; accessed March 17, 2008.
26The committee thanks Martin Haemmig, Martin Haemmig International, for providing
much of the venture capital data used in this section.
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8 ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S.
Department of Commerce, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) was about
$13,247 billion in 2006. Of this, some $521 billion (almost 4 percent) is
attributed to what BEA classifies as the “information-communications-
technology (ICT) producing industries.”64 Furthermore, this sector—
sparked and fueled by IT R&D—experienced double-digit real growth
for the third consecutive year in 2006, increasing by 12.5 percent. 65 In
2006, these industries accounted for about 4 percent of the economy but
contributed 14.2 percent of real GDP growth.66 Table 4.7 shows a differ-
ent measure of the sector’s economic contribution: its contribution to real
value added (real value added captures the contribution of an industry’s
labor and capital to real GDP). These contributions, although substantial,
reflect only a portion of the overall long-term benefits from IT research
investments.
Organization of University Research
Federal funding for university research in information technology has
traditionally followed a model of a three-legged stool (see Box 4.3 for a
quick view into one university’s funding sources and patterns). One leg
consisted of modest grants provided by the National Science Foundation67
and the Defense Science Offices (Office of Naval Research, Army Research
Office, and Air Force Office of Scientific Research) to single investigators
to work primarily on fundamental research problems. These were either
peer-reviewed or evaluated by a panel drawn from technical experts
within the government. The grants were sufficient to fund one to two
students to work on a research problem.
64According to the BEA, the ICT-producing industries consist of the following: com-
puter and electronic products within durable-goods manufacturing; publishing industries
(including software) and information and data processing services within information-
producing industries; and computer systems design and related services within profes-
sional, scientific, and technical services. See Thomas F. Howells III and Kevin B. Barefoot,
“Annual Industry Accounts—Advance Estimates for 2006,” Surey of Current Business,
Table 1, May 2007, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, D.C., available at http://bea.
gov/scb/pdf/2007/05%20May/0507_annual_industry_accounts.pdf; accessed August 28,
2007.
65See ibid., Table B.
66See ibid., Table A.
67NSF’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) sup-
ports research in three broad areas: computing and communication foundations, computer
and network systems, and information and intelligent systems. Other IT-relevant funding
sources include the NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure and initiatives within the Engineer-
ing Directorate.
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TABLE 4.7 Percentage Changes in and Real Value Added to U.S.
Gross Domestic Product, by Industry Group, 2003-2006
2003 (%) 2004 (%) 2005 (%) 2006 (%)
U.S. gross domestic product 2.5 3.9 3.2 3.3
Private industries (overall) 2.7 4.2 3.3 3.7
Information-communications- 7.2 13.7 13.3 12.5
technology (ICT)-producing
private industries
SOURCE: Data from Thomas F. Howells III and Kevin B. Barefoot, “Annual Industry
Accounts—Advance Estimates for 2006,” Surey of Current Business, Table B, May 2007,
Bureau of Economic Analysis, Washington, D.C., available at http://bea.gov/scb/pdf/
2007/05%20May/0507_annual_industry_accounts.pdf; accessed August 28, 2007.
As a second leg of this model and at the opposite extreme from mod-
est grants to single investigators, the NSF also funded larger-scale, theme-
oriented research endeavors through such programs as Engineering
Research Centers and Science and Technology Centers. The Department
of Defense (DOD) developed the Multidisciplinary University Research
Initiative (MURI) Program for similar purposes. These programs were
intended to receive support for relatively long periods of time—5 to 10
years, rather than 2 or 3 years for single-investigator grants—and often
involved further requirements in terms of industry or institutional match-
ing support. Such centers could encompass the research activities of two
dozen faculty members or more, with the result that funding was thinly
spread and best used to support work at the intersection of individual
investigators’ interests. Critical-mass research efforts necessary to achieve
breakthroughs were difficult to achieve.
The third leg, uniquely epitomized by Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) support, was critical-mass funding for small
teams of faculty and their graduate students: 5 to 6 investigators plus
15 to 20 graduate students. The level of funding was comparable with
and sometimes exceeded that of an NSF center, but it was focused on the
research activity of a much smaller group. Furthermore, such efforts were
not pursued in a vacuum but in the context of a program (see Box 4.4).
These efforts consisted of perhaps a dozen similarly sized teams, span-
ning universities and industry, developing competing technologies but
also cooperating on developing a common underlying infrastructure—
including, importantly, a research community in an area of strategic need.
Examples include the DARPA VLSI Project and the High Performance
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0 ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
Box 4.3
The Changing Sources of Information
Technology R&D Funding
The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is one of the premier information
technology university laboratories in the world. With 93 principal investigators,
471 graduate students, 112 research staff, 46 other staff, and a $45 million per
year research expenditure, it is without question a large research enterprise. The
laboratory has long enjoyed high levels of research support from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Table 4.3.1 shows the percentage breakdown of funding sources for the
MIT laboratory’s activities between 2000 and 2008.1 The data show a dramatic
decrease in the percentage of DARPA funding, matched by a similarly large in-
crease in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). By the end of
the period, the laboratory’s funding base is more balanced than in 2000, with
roughly equal portions from nongovernment sources (mostly industry), NSF, and
the Department of Defense (DoD). In 2000, DoD provided almost two-thirds of
the laboratory’s funding.
TABLE 4.3.1 Percentage of Funding for MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, 2000-2008, by Source
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008
Source (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
Nongovernment 28.3 33.0 43.2 46.7 39.5 33.1 32.8 32.1 30.8
Government 71.7 67.0 56.8 53.3 60.5 66.9 67.2 67.9 69.2
NSF 7.5 7.9 9.9 15.3 22.9 25.3 26.8 26.7 27.4
DOD Total 62.9 54.2 43.6 33.4 29.7 28.6 24.3 27.8 29.7
DARPA 51.6 47.9 37.9 26.6 25.6 25.6 19.6 23.1 24.2
Other U.S.
1.3 4.9 3.3 4.6 7.9 13.0 16.1 13.4 12.1
Government
SoURCE: Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “IT Research Funding:
An MIT CSAIL Perspective,” presentation to the committee, Boston, Mass., April 19, 2007.
Table 4.3.1 in Box.eps
Updated and corrected percentages provided to the committee by personal communication
from Rodney Brooks, July 15, 2008.
one dimension of the data not made obvious in this table is the increas-
ing level of support from foreign firms for MIT’s research. Quanta Computer, a
major manufacturer of personal computers based in Taiwan, has entered into a
long-term, $20 million research agreement with MIT to investigate what will come
“beyond the notebook computer.”2 Nokia, a major manufacturer of telecommunica-
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
Box 4.3 continued
tions equipment based in Finland, has established a research laboratory close to
MIT to pursue collaborative activities.3 Clearly, even support for university research
is becoming globalized.
1Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “IT Research Funding: An MIT
CSAIL Perspective,” presentation to the committee, Boston, Mass., April 19, 2007.
2See “Quanta Computer, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Announce
TParty Project–CSAIL Spotlight,” http://www.csail.mit.edu/node/363; accessed December 11,
2008.
3See “Nokia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Celebrate the opening of
Nokia Research Center Cambridge,” April 21, 2006, available at http://press.nokia.com/
PR/200604/1046070_5.html; accessed August 24, 2007.
Computing and Communications Program of the late 1980s through the
1990s. This program type of organization was essential in transitioning
fundamental research to a size and scale of proof of concept that the rest
of the ecosystem could then begin to commercialize.68
In 2000, NSF introduced the Information Technology Research (ITR)
Program to provide a large-grant funding mechanism. The program did
not, however, provide the same sort of programmatic context that DARPA
has been able to provide. Thus, the research teams were not organized
in a way that enabled them to achieve even better results through the
process of competition, cooperation, shared infrastructure, and research
community formation. With DARPA’s shift away from its traditional sup-
port for university-based information technology research in this decade,
this third leg of the stool, critical for the field’s success in the past, has
largely been lost.
In 2007, however, the NSF Directorate for Computer and Information
Science and Engineering (CISE) made a small but positive step forward
in this regard, with the new Expeditions in Computing Program, which is
68For more on DARPA’s early and continuing roles in IT, see “Happy Birthday, Sputnik!
(Thanks for the Internet),” Computerworld, September 24, 2007, available at http://computer
world.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9036482&pageNumber=1;
accessed October 18, 2007.
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
Box 4.4
The Role of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
in the organization of Information Technology R&D
In the early years of the information technology (IT) industry in the United
States, the Department of Defense (DoD) played a crucial role, as a supporter of
research and as a sophisticated procurer of IT systems. In the 1960s and 1970s,
the DoD pulled forward such strategic IT sectors as integrated circuits, computer-
aided design software, time-sharing systems, and packet switching networks (i.e.,
the Advanced Research Projects Agency network, or ARPAnet).
The science offices of the military services—the office of Naval Research
(oNR), the Army Research office (ARo), and the Air Force office of Scientific
Research (AFoSR)—have a long history of supporting fundamental research
related to DoD missions. Further, the DoD maintains its own establishment of
research laboratories, to develop specific prototype defense capabilities while also
evaluating concepts from the defense contractor community. In terms of organizing
research outside the DoD, the major funder of IT research and advanced devel-
opment has traditionally been DARPA: the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (originally “ARPA”).1
Formed in the late 1950s in the wake of the Soviet launching of Sputnik and
the American public furor that followed,2 the agency has acquired an almost magical
reputation for establishing ambitious research goals, organizing research communi-
ties, and executing programs that expand the technology base to demonstrate new
military capabilities. The agency’s unofficial charter is to “avoid future technological
surprise.” Its modus operandi is critical-mass funding to support project teams, or-
ganized into cooperative and competitive multiteam programs, under the direction
of an empowered program manager (PM) who stands as the mediator between the
researchers on the one hand and the DoD customers on the other.3
Many within the IT research community point to the late 1980s and early
1990s as the high-water mark of DARPA support for the field. The mid-1980s saw
the emergence of DARPA’s Strategic Computing Program (SCP) to apply artificial
intelligence (AI) techniques to DoD applications in autonomous vehicles, in fleet
battle management, and in a pilot’s associate. In addition to the demand pull that
these stressing applications placed on speech understanding, computer vision,
user interfaces, and planning systems, they also put stretch demands on the un-
derlying networked hardware and software systems on which they would execute.
That is, these applications’ requirements pushed the state of the art in these fields
and also required more capabilities in the underlying systems. Therefore, SCP
represented a very significant increment in defense funding for IT research.4
1For more on DARPA (originally ARPA) management style, see National Research Coun-
cil, Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C., 1999, pp. 98-105.
2Roger D. Launiusk, “Sputnik and the origins of the Space Age,” available at http://history.
nasa.gov/sputnik/sputorig.html; accessed March 27, 2008.
3See “Strategic Vision,” available at http://www.darpa.mil/stratvision.html; accessed January
7, 2009.
4Alex Roland and Philip Shiman, Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine
Intelligence, 1983-1993, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002.
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Box 4.4 continued
The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-194) was
motivated in part by a 1988 report of the National Research Council, Toward a
National Research Network.5 Key outcomes of the act were the creation of the
federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program 6
and the establishment of a mechanism to coordinate research in communications
across the science and technology agencies of the government.7 Although some
agencies saw their funding for HPCC-related research increase owing to the act,
much of the work that came under the HPCC rubric was already being carried out
by federal agencies.
The multiagency focus combined with the HPCC Program’s high visibility
and compelling stretch performance goals are credited with motivating a whole
generation of researchers to enter the field and contribute to HPCC’s success.
The size and diversity of the research program grew significantly, encompassing
more universities and more firms. A perhaps less well known outcome was that
the High Performance Computing Act has fostered collaborative work in which a
small number of research administrators within these diverse and often competitive
organizations have worked together to rationalize their research and development
investments in order to maximize leverage and minimize overlap of effort and to
promote and publicize their scientific and technical accomplishments. on the nega-
tive side, some have observed that the size of the program attracted the attention
of lobbyists, who sought to influence procurements, and of legislators, who sought
to earmark funds for projects within their constituencies.
Within the DoD, SCP evolved from an AI program with a modest comput-
ing component to a major program in HPCC. The program laid the foundation for
today’s scalar cluster-based processors and storage systems on which virtually
every major Web site depends. By the mid-1990s, DARPA deemphasized its in-
vestment in high performance computing, with the technical leadership shifting
to the Department of Energy Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)
Program.8 The ASCI Program focused on developing very large scale parallel
5National Research Council, Toward a National Research Network, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C., 1988. This publication is sometimes referred to as the Kleinrock
report, after the authoring committee’s chair, Leonard Kleinrock.
6See, for example, D.B. Nelson, “High Performance Computing and Communications Pro-
gram,” Proceedings of the 1992 ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, Minneapolis,
Minn., 1992.
7Membership in the program, now known as the Networking and Information Technology
Research and Development Program, has expanded over the years. The current members are
the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, the National Nuclear Security Agency, the office of Science of the Department of
Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Archives and Records Administra-
tion, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health,
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the offices
of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Science and Technology) and Director of Defense
Research and Engineering of the Department of Defense.
8Department of Energy, Defense Programs, Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative
(ASCI) Program Plan, DoE/DP-99-000010592, Washington, D.C., January 2000.
continued
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
Box 4.4 continued
machines targeted for the department’s nuclear weapons design needs (known
as stockpile stewardship). Most of its funding was directed to its contractor-
managed weapons laboratories—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los
Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories—and the machine
vendor community. The university HPCC community found it increasingly difficult to
receive critical funding to sustain the project teams that had been formed during
the earlier stages of HPCC, particularly in areas of computer architecture, parallel
software, and internetworking. In 1998 the Next Generation Internet Research Act
(Public Law 105-305) was passed, broadening the scope and name of the pro-
gram to the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development
(NITRD) Program. Today, the NITRD Program and the National Coordination office
for NITRD are together the major coordinating umbrella for IT research within the
federal government.
Two major characteristics of DARPA-sponsored IT research between the
1960s and 1980s contributed to its success. The first was DARPA’s particular
style of project-focused research, mentioned above, typically spanning teams of
four to five faculty investigators and their students (although teams also included
industrial participants), organized into programs in which the teams are driven to
cooperate and/or compete through the oversight of the PM. The PM served as
a critical intermediary between the researchers and the military customer, plac-
ing the research results in the relevant military context while also expressing the
military needs in a language that the researchers could understand. The second
characteristic was the recognition that it is often just as strategic to build a research
community, such as one skilled in developing software for new parallel architec-
tures, as it is to develop the particular technologies that such a community might
invent. These characteristics of DARPA successes suggest that simply increasing
funding without such a programmatic structure will not yield an ecosystem that is
as effective as it was during the past.
intended to provide longer-term research support for teams. The program
currently has a total budget of $30 million. Each expedition will be funded
at up to $2 million per year for 5 years, and CISE estimates that it will
provide three new awards each year.69
69According to CISE, “The intent is to provide the opportunity to pursue ambitious, fun-
damental research agendas that promise to define the future of computing and information.
In planning Expeditions, investigators are encouraged to come together within or across
departments or institutions to combine their creative talents in the identification of compel-
ling, transformative research agendas that promise disruptive innovations in computing
and information for many years to come.” See “Expeditions in Computing,” September 13,
2007, available at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07592/nsf07592.txt; accessed October
23, 2007.
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CHANgES IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
EMPLOyEES AND EMPLOyERS
The foundations of the American system of employment were con-
ceptualized under the New Deal and institutionalized in law and by col-
lective bargaining agreements. In return for employees’ loyalty and best
efforts, employers agreed to fulfill both legally and culturally prescribed
obligations: a reasonable expectation of job security and such benefits as
health insurance and pension plans. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the cul-
tural contract between worker and employer began to unravel as employ-
ment practices and policies shifted toward a laissez-faire philosophy remi-
niscent of the 19th and early 20th centuries.70 This context is important
when considering the IT workforce issues and patterns of student enroll-
ments discussed previously.
A number of developments contributed to this unraveling. The first
was “downsizing” or “rightsizing,” euphemisms for what had formerly
been known as “layoffs.” Until the mid-1980s most layoffs occurred dur-
ing recessions or when firms found themselves in financial trouble. Lay-
offs were primarily confined to blue-collar and clerical workers, who
often returned to work once the economy improved. In hard times, pro-
fessionals and managers could assume that they were safe even from
temporary layoffs.
During the 1980s, the rules of the game changed. For the first time
in history, firms began to shed professional, technical, and managerial
workers in large numbers. In fact, by the mid-1990s corporate downsiz-
ings were more likely to target managers and professionals than to dis-
miss other white-collar or blue-collar workers.71 Moreover, downsizings,
70The unraveling of the New Deal employment system has been exetensively documented
in Thomas A. Kochan, Harry C. Katz, and Robert B. McKersie, The Transformation of American
Industrial Relations, Basic Books, New York, N.Y., 1986; Peter Cappelli, Laurie Bassi, Harry
Katz, David Knoke, Paul Osterman, and Michael Useem, Change at Work, Oxford, New York,
N.Y., 1997; Paul Osterman, Broken Ladders: Managerial Careers in the New Economy, Oxford
University Press, New York, N.Y., 1996; Paul Osterman, Securing Prosperity: The American
Labor Market: how It has Changed and What to Do About It, Princeton University Press, Prince-
ton, N.J., 1999; and Paul Osterman, Thomas A. Kochan, M. Locke Richard, and Michael J.
Piore, Working in America: Blueprint for the New Labor Market, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.,
2001.
71On the nature and extent of downsizing, see Thomas S. Moore, The Disposable Work Force,
Aldine, New York, N.Y., 1996; American Management Association, AMA Surey on
Downsizing, Job Elimination and Job Creation, New York, N.Y., 1996; and Harry S. Farber, “The
Changing Face of Job Loss in the United States: 1981-1995,” pp. 55-142 in Brookings Papers on
Economic Actiity: Microeconomics, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1977. On the
impact of downsizing on employee perceptions, attitudes, and lives, see Katherine Newman,
Falling from Grace: The Experience of Downward Mobility in the American Middle Class, Vintage,
New York, N.Y., 1989; Charles Heckscher, White-Collar Blues, Basic Books, New York, N.Y.,
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ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
unlike layoffs of the past, seemed independent of economic cycles. Under
pressure from global competition and their stockholders, firms had dis-
covered that streamlining the workforce was necessary to achieve their
bottom-line targets and boost their stock prices.72
By the late 1990s three practices were augmenting and exacerbating
the downsizing: the outsourcing of work to external suppliers, the off-
shoring of jobs, and the use of contingent labor. Contingent workers are
individuals hired, often through staffing agencies, for a limited period
of time to perform specific work. Although firms have long employed
temporary workers for seasonal and short-term needs, during the late
1980s corporations began to view temporary labor as an extension of the
broader strategy of outsourcing. The shift from permanent to contingent
employment became particularly widespread in IT centers and among
high-technology firms.73 The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that,
by 1995, 40 percent of all programmers and 29 percent of other IT work-
ers were either contingently employed or worked through outsourcing
firms.74 In Silicon Valley, contractors often comprise between 15 and 30
percent of the labor force.75
Data on employment turnover are consistent with the demise of
employment security and stable relations between employers and employ-
ees. Between 1983 and 2004, average tenure with one’s current employer
fell by 2.1 years (from 7.3 to 5.2 years) among men between the ages of
35 and 44. Among men between 45 and 54 and between 55 and 65 years
of age, the declines were greater: 3.2 years (from 12.8 to 9.6 years) and 5.5
years (from 15.3 to 9.8 years), respectively.76
The combination of downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, and contin-
gent work dramatically altered the tenor of the employment relationship.
The first casualty was loyalty. Despite stable levels of job satisfaction and
1995; Denise Rousseau, Psychological Contracts in Organizations, Sage Publications, Thou-
sand Oaks, Calif., 1995; and Denise Rousseau and R.J. Anton, “Fairness and Obligations in
Termination Decisions: The Role of Contributions, Promises and Performance,” Journal of
Organizational Behaior 12(4):287-299, 1991.
72Wayne F. Cascio, Clifford E. Young, and James R. Morris, “Financial Consequences of
Employment-Change Decisions in Major U.S. Corporations,” Academy of Management Journal
40(5):1175-1189, 1997.
73Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda, Gurus, hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Ex-
perts in a Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2004.
74Angela Clinton, “Flexible Labor: Restructuring the American Workforce,” Monthly Labor
Reiew 120(8):3-27, 1997.
75Chris Benner, Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley, Blackwell,
Malden, Mass., 2002.
76Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Employee Tenure in 00, USDL-04-1829, BLS, Washing-
ton, D.C., 2004, available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/History/tenure_09212004.
txt.
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A GLOBALIzED, DyNAMIC INFORMATION TEChNOLOGy R&D ECOSySTEM
a vibrant economy, employees became increasingly distrustful of their
employers and less sanguine about their future over the 1990s.77 Employ-
ers, for their part, dropped the pretense of hiring with any expectation of a
long-term relationship. Some openly cautioned new hires about the firm’s
limited commitment to them. Apple’s human resource policy, which was
reputedly given to each new hire, stated:
Here’s the deal Apple will give you; here’s what we want from you.
We’re going to give you a really neat trip while you’re here. We’re going
to teach you stuff you couldn’t learn anywhere else. In return . . . we
expect you to work like hell, buy the vision as long as you’re here. . . .
We’re not interested in employing you for a lifetime, but that’s not the
way we’re thinking about this. It’s a good opportunity for both of us that
this is probably finite.78
The second and more important casualty of the altered employment
relationship has been the integrity of America’s system for insuring the
health and welfare of the workforce. During the New Deal the govern-
ment and industry reached an agreement on how to care for the sick and
elderly: Rather than adopting national and universal health care coverage
and pension funds, Americans would receive health insurance and pen-
sions through their employers. The employment relationship thus became
the cornerstone of America’s social safety net, but as the health care
costs and pension obligations have risen and as job security has fallen,
an increasing number of employers have ceased providing either benefit
to workers. Between 1979 and 2004, the percentage of Americans with
employer-provided health insurance fell from 69 percent to 56 percent.
The rate of decline has been even steeper for Hispanic Americans.79 While
the trends are not specific to the IT industry, not only is it not immune to
them, but the fast-changing nature of IT businesses, their rapid globaliza-
tion, and the need for maximal flexibility of operations has exacerbated
these trends in the IT industry.
Trends in pension funds are equally striking.80 Between 1983 and
2004, the percentage of American workers covered only by a defined-
77National Research Council, The Changing Nature of Work: Implications for Occupational
Analysis, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1999.
78Barbara Ettorre, “The Contingency Workforce Moves Mainstream,” Management Reiew
83(2):10-16, 1994, quoting from Apple Computer’s written employment contract with every
full-time employee.
79Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America, An
Economic Policy Institute Book, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 2007, Figure 3H.
80Data on participation in pension plans are from Alicia H. Munnell and Annika Sunden,
“401K Plans Are Still Coming Up Short,” in Issues in Brief, Center for Retirement Research,
Boston College, Boston, Mass., 2006.
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8 ASSESSING ThE IMPACTS OF ChANGES IN ThE IT R&D ECOSySTEM
benefit plan fell from 62 percent to 20 percent. Conversely, during the
same period the percentage of the workforce covered only by a defined-
contribution plan grew from 12 percent to 63 percent. As of 2004, one-fifth
of working Americans who were eligible to contribute to defined contri-
butions made no contribution whatsoever. Less than 1 percent of work-
ers earning less than $60,000 annually contribute the maximum. Among
those earning between $60,000 to $80,000 annually, only 8.3 percent make
maximum contributions. In fact, only 58 percent of Americans who make
more than $100,000 a year contribute maximally. The situation among
technical contractors is at least equally dire, if not more so. Although
the well-educated and well-paid high-tech contractors whom Barley and
Kunda81 interviewed were mostly in their 40s and 50s, 45 percent had
no retirement account whatsoever. Another 20 percent had only an indi-
vidual retirement account (IRA). Only 20 percent participated in a 401K
or simplified employee pension (SEP) plan.
81Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda, Gurus, hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Ex-
perts in a Knowledge Economy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 2004.