Sociedade, Tecnologia e Inovação Empresarial - Presidente da ...

share of employment in the services sector follows a long historicaltrend, not altered by the relative slowdown in economic growth whichaffected most developed economies since the mid 1970’s. Still the tertiarisationtrend experienced over the last two decades has some distinctivefeatures, of which the most marked one is the unprecedentedgrowth of business services over the last two decades. Their share intotal employment rose from some mere percentage points to more than10% today. The business and finance services sector constitutes a «new»phenomenon, characteristic of a new fabric of relations between firms,and consists of a wide variety of specialised services to business (fromaudit and research labs to cleaning and surveying). These new serviceactivities mix very diverse types of activities, some using highly qualifiedlabour and others requiring low qualified labour.The development of a set of highly qualified service activities inmany new market niches appears again primarily linked to ICTs. Someof these activities were instrumental in developing a logistics, whichtogether with the spread of large network services in communication,transport and distribution, induced further the enlargement of this globalreach capability. On the other hand, the same activities contributedalso strongly to the diffusion of the new technological system. In thefirst place they provided the core of professionals needed to maintain,assist and complement the diffusion of the new information and communicationtechnologies (all business services linked to hardware andsoftware activities). Secondly they developed new sort of activities,exploiting for individual firms the data gathering possibilities of newICTs in terms of data maining, treatment and fast communication ofsuch increasingly valuable commercial information. The developmentof such expertise has been an important factor favouring a reshufflingin the internal organisation of firms, its outsourcing practices and productturnover. It does not mean though that a new «optimal» model offirm organisation emerged in the process. The latter remains largely alearning process, influenced as much by local traditions and tastes asby the efficiency of local suppliers of qualified services.In effect a steady growth of personal and community services accompaniedthe development of the structural changes mentioned above.Luc Soete3 0 5Europe and national technology policies…