None of that directly describes business (or consumer) value. It is mostly a recitation of information technology statistics. If you look at the period of say

None of that directly describes business (or consumer) value. It is mostly a recitation of information technology statistics. If you look at the period of say 1990-2010 there was an absolutely insane ROI on human capital invested into IT. Arguably this level of ROI only happens once or twice in a century. You had young guys in their basements, garages etc. inventing life-changing technology with no investment other than a PC, an Internet connection, and time. It basically all revolved around getting people a PC, a 'net connection, and a phone, and then delivering services over those things. Everyone saw what was going on and there was an unprecedented global migration of labor into the IT industry. There was a perception that anyone could be a millionaire, and anyone could change the world, etc. and some degree of truth to it. There's no denying that much of the low hanging fruit is now gone, and there are more people in the industry than ever before (many of whom had huge expectations based on what they had witnessed transpiring a decade or two prior). So of course you are going to have a changing industry and an expectations mismatch. The old days are over and they're not coming back. Any new wave of innovation and disruption is at least as likely to come from a non-IT industry as it is from IT. There are still trillions of dollars to be made in IT. Since the future is never evenly distributed, a lot of these dollars are in emerging markets, and/or in industries which are being transformed by the IT revolution's latest waves a bit late in the game. But it is a different industry now, there are fewer opportunities for disruption and there are many many more fingers in the pie. In general the way this money is made will look a little bit more like how money's made in mature industries every year. There's no fighting history and you're not going to be the next Steve Jobs. But the pie is so big that you can carve out whatever kind of little niche you would like, as long as you understand the rules of the game.