Information and decision technologies: Nine needs and niches for the nineties

This paper explores nine information and decision technology areas that appear to be particularly significant looking forward into the 1990s. These technologies are viewed as necessarily continuing to grow in part as a result of perceived needs of users and thereby represent important niches that are likely to be filled and expanded by technology developers. Information and decision technologies for the nineties clearly will benefit from computer and communications advances with specific applications of these advances responding to user needs and requirements. Whether ‘technology push’ is stronger than ‘customer/market pull’ is debatable; the confluence of these two forces will lead to the strengthening of market niches that have at least partially surfaced. It is the primary purpose of this paper to help define more precisely some of the particular niches that are likely to emerge more strongly in the nineties.