In the old economy, manufacturing led the way and regions competed largely by offering a low-cost environment in which businesses could operate.

The idea behind services blueprinting is fairly simple: Companies put themselves in their customers' shoes to find out what's working, what's not, and what needs to be changed.

There's little margin for error when you're in the business of selling electrons. After all, if an electron traveled around the world instead of bouncing around the nucleus of an atom, it would circle the earth some 8.3 times in one second.

Asim Roy, an information systems professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, was on sabbatical at Stanford University in 1991 when several years of thinking about the operation of the brain and artificial systems inspired him to act.

Increasingly companies are viewing technology not just as a way to get things done but also as a way to move forward.

A recent survey found that $20 billion is spent annually on market research, and yet 80 percent of new items fail, according to Bart Steiner, founder and CEO of Phoenix-based Bulbstorm.com.

Collaborative technology is continuing to evolve — fostering innovation, connecting experts and creating relationships, between companies and their customers.

The next big upgrade to your corporate systems department may be something you will use but never see — "cloud computing," the next step in the evolution of SaaS technology. As with SaaS, cloud-computing customers tap into computing resources off-site and hosted by another company.

Self-service technologies, which automate routine interactions between companies and customers, are a source of convenience and efficiency to both parties — until something goes wrong and the customer cannot make the system work.