Trend 1

The first trend is in the product market in the digital age. This gives power from companies to the consumers. This power shift is a direct result of the decrease in price of three production factors: information, connectivity, and computing power. The internet has made information free, so consumers can readily compare prices from various stores. Mobile devices and networks have made a global reach and continuous connectivity widely available- in Watkins' article, 93% of people surveyed had computers and 96% had cellphones. This shows how common owning a piece of technology is and how important it is to the owner. Computing power (article about memory expansion) has developed into Cloud computing: a cluster of servers for centralized data storage. According to Moore's law: "the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on a semi conductor device doubles every 18 months" (Spence). This means that costs of information processing have decreased and continue to decrease. Cloud computing gives infinite computing power and storage at a low cost. These factors eliminate the barriers to entry, which is how smaller more innovative companies can out perform a market leader like Border's, if Border's is not constantly improving. 

Spence, Michael “Information technology and the integration of the global economy,” in The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World (2011).