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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
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Continuing
Innovation

IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Committee on Depicting Innovation in Information Technology

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board

Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS   500 Fifth Street, NW   Washington, DC 20001

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under sponsor award number IIS-0840364. Any opinions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies and organizations that provided support for the project.

Figure 1 designed by Dmitry Krasny, Deka Design. Text layout by Estelle Miller, The National Academies Press.

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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.

www.national-academies.org

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

COMMITTEE ON DEPICTING INNOVATION
IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

PETER LEE, Microsoft Research, Chair

MARK E. DEAN, IBM Corporation

DEBORAH L. ESTRIN, University of California, Los Angeles

JAMES T. KAJIYA, Microsoft Corporation

PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN, Google, Inc.

ANDREW J. VITERBI, Viterbi Group, LLC

Staff

JON K. EISENBERG, CSTB Director

EMILY ANN MEYER, Study Director

SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD

ROBERT F. SPROULL, Oracle (retired), Chair

PRITHVIRAJ BANERJEE, Hewlett Packard Company

STEVEN M. BELLOVIN, Columbia University

JACK L. GOLDSMITH III, Harvard Law School

SEYMOUR E. GOODMAN, Georgia Institute of Technology

JON M. KLEINBERG, Cornell University

ROBERT KRAUT, Carnegie Mellon University

SUSAN LANDAU, Harvard University

PETER LEE, Microsoft Research

DAVID LIDDLE, U.S. Venture Partners

DAVID E. SHAW, D.E. Shaw Research

ALFRED Z. SPECTOR, Google, Inc.

JOHN STANKOVIC, University of Virginia

JOHN SWAINSON, Dell, Inc.

PETER SZOLOVITS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

PETER J. WEINBERGER, Google, Inc.

ERNEST J. WILSON, University of Southern California

KATHERINE YELICK, University of California, Berkeley

Staff

JON K. EISENBERG, Director

RENEE HAWKINS, Financial and Administrative Manager

HERBERT S. LIN, Chief Scientist

LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer

EMILY ANN MEYER, Program Officer

VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Associate Program Officer

ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer

SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant

ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

Preface

In 1995, the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) produced the report Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation’s Information Infrastructure.1 A graphic in that report, often called the “tire tracks” diagram because of its appearance, produced an extraordinary response by clearly linking investments in academic and industry research to the ultimate creation of new information technology (IT) industries with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.2 Used in presentations to Congress and executive branch decision makers and discussed broadly in the research and innovation policy communities, the tire tracks figure dispelled the assumption that the commercially successful IT industry is self-sufficient, underscoring how much industry instead builds on government-funded university research, sometimes through long incubation periods of years and even decades. It also compellingly illustrates the complex nature of research in the field and the interdependencies between various subfields of computing and communications research.

The figure was updated in the 2002 CSTB report Information Technology Research, Innovation, and E-Government and again in the 2003 CSTB report Innovation in Information Technology, largely through the addition of tracks in important new areas such as entertainment and data mining. The 2003 report also distilled key lessons from eight prior CSTB studies about the nature of research in information technology—including the unpredictability of and synergy among research results; the roles of government, industry, and academia; and the social returns from research. A 2009 report, Assessing the Impacts of Changes in the Information Technology R&D Ecosystem: Retaining Leadership in an Increasingly Global Environment, reproduced the 2003 update to the diagram and explored many of the related themes.

Computing research and its impacts have continued to evolve and blossom in the years since the 2003 version of the tire tracks figure was published. With the support of the National Science

____________

1 All NRC/CSTB reports referred to in this preface were published by the National Academy Press/The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., in the year indicated.

2 IT advances have of course also had profound impacts on nearly every major industry sector, not just IT industries; these indirect effects were not the focus of the present project.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
×

Statement of Task

A small committee will update a previously issued figure depicting the role that government-supported, academic, and industrial research plays in the formation of major new IT capabilities (as measured by the emergence of billion-dollar information technology industries). The update will introduce additional billion-dollar industries and other developments as appropriate. A brief report will highlight the updated tire tracks figure and summarize key points from past CSTB reports related to the results of IT research; the nature and success of the U.S. research partnership among government, industry, and universities; economic payoffs of investments in research; and the evolution of the U.S. IT R&D ecosystem. The report will not contain any new findings and recommendations.

Foundation, CSTB undertook a project to prepare an update. The task of the Committee on Depicting Innovation in Information Technology was threefold (see box): (1) to reconsider important research areas and significant billion-dollar-plus IT industries that had emerged since the 2003 report, (2) to reconsider how best to characterize and depict these investments and impacts, and (3) to recap and update the material in the 2003 report that accompanied the tire tracks figure and that presents related lessons on the impact of research on innovation in information technology.

In updating the content of the figure, the committee drew on the earlier CSTB work as well as the committee’s own knowledge of key research contributions and results, and also obtained input on these from a number of computing researchers whose contributions are acknowledged below. The committee conducted meetings by teleconference and collaborated extensively by e-mail to develop the present report. In reconsidering the design of the figure, the committee explored several design approaches, some quite different from that in the original 1995 figure, and worked with a designer to explore alternatives. Ultimately, the committee decided to retain many features of the original tire tracks while somewhat changing the overall structure and adding some elements as outlined in the first section of this report.

The new figure is accompanied by a brief text based in large part on prior CSTB reports. Unless otherwise indicated in the notes, the primary source is the 2003 report Innovation in Information Technology. Where appropriate, the committee has updated the text to provide more current information and recent examples. For readability, direct extracts from earlier CSTB work are not set in quotation marks.

The committee thanks the following researchers who provided input on specific technical and research questions: Yossi Azar, Victor Bahl, Suman Banerjee, Doug Burger, Surajit Chaudhuri, Carlos Guestrin, Hauges Hoppe, Andrew Hopper, Eric Horvitz, Butler Lampson, James Landay, Paul Larson, Ed Lazowska, James Lee, David Lomet, Beth Mynatt, David Patterson, Yuval Peres, and Mani Srivastava. We also are sincerely appreciative of the services and leadership of Eugene Spafford, chair of the committee from September 2009 to January 2011. Finally, the committee thanks Dmitry Krasny, Deka Design, for his expert design assistance in realizing the committee’s vision for Figure 1.

Peter Lee, Chair

Committee on Depicting Innovation in Information Technology

Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
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Acknowledgment of Reviewers

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:

Peter Freeman, Georgia Institute of Technology

Susan Graham, University of California, Berkeley

Laura Haas, IBM Almaden Research Center

David Patterson, University of California, Berkeley

Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University

Robert F. Sproull, Oracle (retired)

John Stankovic, University of Virginia

Patrick Winston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Katherine Yelick, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations, nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Joseph Traub, Columbia University. Appointed by the National Research Council, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13427.
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Information technology (IT) is widely understood to be the enabling technology of the 21st century. IT has transformed, and continues to transform, all aspects of our lives: commerce and finance, education, employment, energy, health care, manufacturing, government, national security, transportation, communications, entertainment, science, and engineering. IT and its impact on the U.S. economy-both directly (the IT sector itself) and indirectly (other sectors that are powered by advances in IT)—continue to grow in size and importance.

In 1995, the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) produced the report Evolving the High Performance Computing and Communications Initiative to Support the Nation's Information Infrastructure. A graphic in that report, often called the "tire tracks" diagram because of its appearance, produced an extraordinary response by clearly linking government investments in academic and industry research to the ultimate creation of new information technology industries with more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Used in presentations to Congress and executive branch decision makers and discussed broadly in the research and innovation policy communities, the tire tracks figure dispelled the assumption that the commercially successful IT industry is self-sufficient, underscoring through long incubation periods of years and even decades. The figure was updated in 2002, 2003, and 2009 reports produced by the CSTB. With the support of the National Science Foundation, CSTB updated the tire tracks figure. Continuing Innovation in Information Technology includes the updated figure and a brief text based in large part on prior CSTB reports.

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