Center for technology and innovation publications

The center for technology and innovation's white papers provide focused, in-depth original research and analysis of significant technology or business trends affecting an industry or market segment. Our white papers are available here as PDFs. 

The situational CIO: IT problem solver, cost cutter, strategist
According to this PwC whitepaper, the pendulum is about to swing back to a demand for more strategic involvement by CIOs, without losing the tactical strengths favored recently.

Technology Forecast, Summer 09
The summer 2009 issue of the quarterly Technology Forecast explores the impact of cloud computing trends on IT infrastructure and its role in creating a foundation for business agility. This issue will show how today's IT environments are dominated by a collection of built to order legacy solutions that were designed to deliver functionality in a silo but not designed for agility and change. More to the point, prevailing IT practices continue to create more and more legacy by building vertically integrated stacks of siloed solutions. As a result, legacy IT has become a significant barrier to IT's ability to enable business agility. Enterprises need a way to invest in IT that does not create an ongoing and growing burden of legacy systems. This issue illustrates the real promise of cloud computing as an IT architecture and management approach that makes it possible for IT to be continuously refreshed and avoid the creation of costly and complex silos of legacy systems.

Technology Forecast, Spring 09
Business intelligence (BI) topped the priority list again in 2009 for CIOs. Many enterprises continue to spend heavily on BI, even in a down economy, but only a few are getting to the root of the BI problem. The real problem is that decision makers don't have enough information context when considering a particular issue to make their best decisions. Spending on more BI applications won't solve this problem--it's a data context problem that requires a data context solution. 

Technology Forecast, Winter 09
This issue of the Technology Forecast explores the future of enterprise applications and their role in creating a foundation for agility in an era of accelerating change.

I for innovation: The next-generation CIO
According to this PwC whitepaper, the best CIOs help define and execute forward-looking business strategies and innovation, as well as maintaining and enhancing technology resources and infrastructure.

Transformers: Three technology innovations that are helping businesses become more agile to better manage change
Today's pace of change is relentless. In this article from our business magazine View, discover how technology innovations like cloud computing, virtualization, enterprise Web 2.0, and business performance platforms are helping companies become more agile to better manage change.

Technology Forecast, Fall 2008
How to maintain a high level of responsiveness is the main issue we explore in the Fall issue of this recently launched journal. As observers and researchers of industry trends, we have been perplexed by the apparent lack of readiness many firms demonstrate when they face market disruptions. Almost always, these disruptions have been predictable—perhaps not in their timing but certainly in their likelihood of happening at some point in time. The emerging trends we’ve uncovered in leading-edge organizations point to a solution. 

Technology Forecast, Summer 2008
This new quarterly journal takes its cue from the well-known annual PwC Technology Forecast books published for over a decade. The inaugural issue considers how IT is evolving within the context of an emerging management model focused on creating enterprise agility. As authority is pushed out to the edge, what IT enablers will facilitate faster decision making? How will companies manage continuous change and the complexity that results from it? What kinds of collaboration and other Web 2.0 tools can help? What's the next software suite?

The economics of IT & hospital performance
There has been considerable research on healthcare IT benefits during the past decade, yet even the most notable studies on the topic have been unable to definitively establish a strong relationship between IT investment and operational performance. To address this research gap, PricewaterhouseCoopers studied US hospitals by using econometric techniques to investigate the relationship between IT adoption and organizational performance in hospitals. The report, which is intended for an executive-level audience, highlights PricewaterhouseCoopers' study design, results, and conclusions.

China's impact on the semiconductor industry: 2008 update
This is the third installment of the Center for technology and innovation's comprehensive research series, which began in response to our clients' interest in the rapid growth of the semiconductor industry in China. Since then, it has become clear that market growth in China is a phenomenon at least as important as industry growth—if not more so. Chinese manufacturing accounts for 90 percent of the annual growth of the worldwide semiconductor market. If multinational semiconductor companies do not have a sufficient presence in China, they are at a significant disadvantage.

Software pricing trends: How vendors can capitalize on the shift to new revenue models
Software vendors are facing significant changes to their business model. They must adapt to a new breed of customer that judges software by its ability to contribute value to the organization. More vendors are moving from the established practice of selling perpetual licenses for packaged software to newer approaches that include software-as- a-service and commercial open source.

The rise of lifestyle media: Achieving success in the digital convergence era
The consumer media landscape is radically changing: Content and services are overflowing while consumer time and attention remains limited. A new approach that helps consumers maximize their limited time and attention to create a rich, personalized, and social media environment is needed. PricewaterhouseCoopers calls this approach Lifestyle Media; it is the combination of a personalized media experience with a social context for participation.

Redefining intellectual property value: The case of China
The rapidly growing capabilities of Chinese manufacturers, combined with their rapid appropriation of IP, are having an unprecedented global impact. Intellectual property vulnerabilities are a growing concern to many companies, including those in the pharmaceutical, software, electronics, consumer goods, and entertainment media industries.

IP transformation: Beyond the triple play
An organization’s strategy for evolving people, process, and technology to leverage a single, converged network based on the Internet protocol (IP) has profound implications for companies across the entertainment, computing, and communications services markets. IP transformation will fundamentally alter the industry landscape, resulting in entirely new value chains and industry structures.

Big bets for the US cable industry: Key opportunities for future revenue growth
Cable operators and networks face tremendous challenges—and great opportunities—over the next decade. A saturated core subscriber base, increasing audience fragmentation, intense competition from telecommunications carriers, disruptive new technologies, and changing consumer behavior are some of the issues affecting the industry. There are significant challenges to sustained revenue growth, but there are also potential services, like the on-demand platform, that can revitalize the industry and create new advertising, economic, and business models.