The software industry through an academic looking glass

There is a conversation beneath the surface of the consulting industry and behind the articles appearing daily in the business press. It is between academic economists, whose rambles are usually not widely circulated, and industry analysts, whose succinct quotes are. The academics and analysts talk past each other most of the time. The academics do what they usually do best, study historical cases and second-guess old battle decisions. Most analysts think this activity is irrelevant to life. And market analysts mostly do what they do best, make pithy quotes and devise flow charts of industry structure and strategy. The author talks about that rare instance when the conversation is useful, when neither the academic is irrelevant nor the analyst shallow. What does that look like? It looks like the book, The International Computer Software Industry, A Comparative Study of Industry Evolution and Structure. The goal of this book is to understand long term trends in the industry