Information Technology
Information and Communications Services (ICS) is both a loosely affiliated industry cluster and an occupational cluster. The industry cluster is composed of roughly 470 companies that design computer hardware, software, and information technologies and that deliver telecommunications or broadcasting services. Approximately 9,400 regional residents are employed in the cluster. The occupational cluster consists of workers in occupations sharing training and skills similar to those required for most ICS jobs, such as computer programming, computer and information systems management, and electrical and electronics repair. In the Central Carolina region, these ICS occupations likely serve the region’s other industry clusters: Health Services Advanced Manufacturing and industry segments such as Broadcasting.
Information and Communications Services is a promising economic-development opportunity for the Central Carolina region with both near and long-term prospects. Near-term cluster growth is likely to be fueled by digital technologies and wireless networking and could include digital processing (post- and preproduction work). In the long term, in addition to attracting business, it will be important to grow the cluster through new business formations by leveraging research in nanotechnologies and optics at the University of South Carolina. It will also be important to grow the region’s habitat for ICS entrepreneurship by helping entrepreneurs gain knowledge of and access to venture and other forms of capital. Anchored by the Region’s strong technical college and university system, as well as the Region’s concern for high-tech development, Central SC can offer IT companies a skilled labor force and favorable business environment.
USC & IT
The Center for Information Management & Technology Research (CIMTR) is dedicated to interdisciplinary research, service, and education related to the strategic use of process and information technologies in organizations. Through its major research concentrations of process management (PRISM), information management, and network & computer-mediated teaching and research, it provides value to both scholarship and practice.