Social and industrial innovation and policy change

Abstract

In this paper I want to examine the scope and limits for a major shift in the internationalisation of trade in information and communication services (or ‘tradeable information’ markets) by the close of the present century. I will seek to relate together some of the key socio‐economic, policy, institutional and other factors which, in interaction with new information and communication technologies (ICT), will influence the form and extent of transformations in the structure and spatial scale of information services markets. Thus, the focus of the paper is on some of the key issues related to the globalisation of information and communication (IC) services markets associated with the development and diffusion of new ICT. My discussion is strongly influenced by the British industrial, policy and research context where the potential for the development of international trade in information services has become a matter of increasing concern to industrialists and public policy makers in more recent years (eg ITAP, 1983).