By JAMES J. MITCHELL
Mercury News Business Editor
WE Americans often think we are burdened by two internal disadvantages
when we combat international competitors: our government, which seems to
hurt business more than it helps; and our culture, which encourages individualism
and often gets in the way of teamwork.
Just the reverse is true when it comes to software. The government helped
create the environment that has enabled our software industry to become
the world leader. And our culture has played an important role in helping
our software industry prosper.
That's good news to Silicon Valley and the U.S. economy because software,
whether on floppy disks or embedded in hardware, is playing an increasingly
important role in products ranging from semiconductors to computers to
portable telephones.
''The industrial world is knowledge-based, and software is the amplifier
of such knowledge,'' says Edward Feigenbaum, head of Stanford's Software
Industry Research Project.
THE government began helping the industry in the mid-1960s, when it began
investing in basic software research. Then in 1968, the Justice Department
forced IBM, which dominated the computer business, to price its hardware
and software separately. This ''unbundling'' enabled competitors to vie
for software contracts.
Finally, the government has worked closely with software publishers to
minimize piracy. That's not the case in Japan, where businesses frequently
make five copies of each program they buy and the government makes 10.
It's impossible to have a strong domestic software industry with that rate
of piracy.
U.S. cultural attitudes have also helped the industry. Americans view software
as real products and are proud to be software engineers. In Japan, software
is considered an intangible; programming is a second-class job; and most
people don't want to invest their careers, or money, in the business.
Even though IBM is by far the largest software company, much of our software
success has come from entrepreneurs. They've succeeded in part because
individualism is highly desired and respected here. Failure is allowable
and, in some cases, considered a prerequisite for success. That's not true
in Japan and Europe.
In the United States, young entrepreneurs are folk heroes, people to be
emulated. And in software, it's often the young who are at the cutting
edge of technology, and they're given tremendous responsibility right out
of school. That's rarely true elsewhere.
So far, the U.S. software industry has even benefited from our tendency
to want to do things quickly rather than perfectly. Customers want improved
functionality and low prices more than software without bugs.
That's no longer the case for some types of software, and eventually quality
may become the driving factor. But that's likely to be far in the future.
And if existing companies don't adjust, you can bet that a new set of entrepreneurs
will.
Write James J. Mitchell at the Mercury News, 750 Ridder Park Drive, San
Jose, CA 95190; phone (408) 920-5544; fax (408) 920-5917 or send e-mail
to JMitch on Mercury Center or JMitch@aol.com on Internet.
MERCURY CENTER ID: me43774m
Transmitted: 94-09-27 09:17:41 EDT
