# Innovation

Innovation. It is the key to growth in every part of IBM's business—from typewriters to advanced information systems. It has dramatically lowered the cost of information processing. And this lower cost not only attracts new users of information products, it also produces greater use by present customers and stimulates the development of entirely new applications. All of which increases the demand for IBM products.

Inflation in the United States has more than doubled most prices in the past 25 years. In spite of this inflation, innovation has driven down the cost per computation by 180 times over the same period. But the pace of innovation in information technology is not measured in quarter-century segments. Innovation has cut the price of main memory in IBM's newest computers today to just one-sixth of what it was only two years ago. Technological advance like this has resulted in significant productivity increases for our customers in business, science and government.

The ultimate beneficiaries of innovation, of course, are people—in their health care, education, financial services, energy conservation, shopping convenience and many other aspects of their daily lives.

Innovation must continue. IBM is part of an industry of thousands of companies in the U.S. and overseas—each one competing hard to best meet the demands of a growing marketplace.

IBM has invested $8 billion in technical innovation over the past decade. That investment has produced hundreds of new or improved products—typewriters, copiers, terminals, processors and programming support. Behind each product has been the individual imagination and creativity of IBM men and women. Their efforts have produced not only a steady flow of better products and better service to our customers but also improvements in the operation of IBM itself—in manufacturing, in marketing and in administration.

The following pages show highlights of this continuing process of innovation and the new products it has produced.