Challenges and chances for innovative companies in a global information society

To enable you to remain competitive in future, you must already start to focus pour company on the task of meeting the challenges that are emerging from development trends stretching back over several years and which are becoming more apparent all the time. These trends are leading to increasing levels of complexity, dynamism and uncertainty in the corporate environment. This paper is an attempt to highlight these technological and structural developments, frequently referred to as megatrends: changes of a fundamental nature with far-reaching implications for the economy and society with attendant opportunities and threats to industry. One focal point of this paper will therefore be the fundamental developments in the microelectronics sector and their wider implications, which will necessarily lead to a consideration of the technologies of IT and telecommunications. Another aspect receiving attention here will be the problems facing industry in the wake of structural change of this magnitude as well as the key measures adopted to enable industry to cope with these problems successfully. This will demonstrate that structural change is not due solely to the increasing level of globalization of world business. Indeed, it will be shown that other significant influencing factors are to be found in the trend moving us from an information society to a knowledge society, and in the transition from an industrial society to one based on services.