ABSTRACT
A substantial part of the study is devoted to identifying the technological fields in which the NTEs had developed their advantages and their characteristics in the advantageous areas. The simple findings from the study are that the NTEs were overwhelmingly concentrated on applications of computer and information technology, and that within the broader area of computer and information technology, the strengths of the NTEs lie in a few classes of products and services. These will be discussed in the first sections of this chapter. The next section of this chapter outlines the characteristics of the NTEs in their contributions to applications of computer and information technology. These characteristics include ‘small systems development’, which was the major outcome of the technological efforts at NTEs, and ‘user capability building’ which was the key orientation of the systems development. The chapter also touches on the learning process which was involved in the development of application systems, as well as the impact of the personal computer revolution on the spin-off restructuring approach.
