Silver Lining: Amid Devastation, Many Still See Gains In Burst Tech Bubble

Even Sufferers Cite the Value Of Innovation and Base For Longer-Term Growth — Looking Again to the Fed

By Greg Ip

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

2497 words

20 March 2001

The Wall Street Journal

A1

English

(Copyright (c) 2001, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

WASHINGTON — As the U.S. economy struggles with the bursting of the high-tech bubble, here’s an improbable question: Could there also have been a bright side?

Billions of dollars went down the drain in the past few years, to support high-tech companies that never made a profit. Years of entrepreneurial effort by the nation’s best and brightest were flushed away on failed business plans. Massive wealth was created, and then destroyed, leaving shattered confidence in its wake.

Yet the bubble also may have done society a huge favor. The technology-stock boom fertilized new technologies and business innovations, and it galvanized old-economy companies into accelerating their own adoption of these innovations.