– John F. Kennedy
Special Joint Session of Congress
May 25, 1961

This post is the third of three contributions to the understanding of the microprocessing revolution. The first discussed AT&T’s invention and sharing of the transistor. The second post explored the refinement of the transistor by the US nuclear military strategy known as “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD). Finally, the below investigates the Cold War’s “Space Race” that established the microprocessor industry’s foundation by subsidizing the production and quality control of the computer “chip.”

Kennedy’s decision to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s was an immediate boost to the transistor and integrated circuit industry. In May of 1961, he set out a national goal of a human-crewed space flight and a landing on the earth’s only natural satellite. It was a Herculean endeavor with many associated tasks seemingly impossible. In particular, the computing needs were immense, as it required extensive calculations and simulations for its success. But NASA persisted and was committed to using computer technologies as part of their strategy to send astronauts into space. NASA conducted three manned space projects during the 1960s: Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, and each used a different computing approach.

The Mercury capsule held only one astronaut and had little maneuvering control except for altitude control jets. Built by the McDonnell-Douglas Corporation, it had no onboard computer. The Atlas rocket was preprogrammed to deliver the astronaut to the desired altitude. Simultaneously, computers on the ground conducted re-entry calculations and sent instructions to the falling Mercury capsule by data communications in real-time. Although this setup worked for the relatively simple goal of shooting a man into the stratosphere, the complexities of the next two programs required new calculative capabilities aboard the actual spacecraft.

It was the Gemini capsule that was the first spacecraft to have an onboard computer as NASA began to develop more ambitious plans. Gemini’s mission included a second astronaut and plans for a rendezvous with an upper-stage rocket launched separately. Called the Agena, this rocket contained restartable liquid fuel that would allow the Gemini to boost itself to a higher orbit. The Gemini Digital Computer (GDC) was needed for the complex maneuver as well as other activities such as a backup for the launch, the insertion into orbit, and the re-entry back to earth. The computer was needed onboard because the tracking network on the ground could not monitor the Gemini’s entire orbit around the planet.[1]

NASA offered a $26.6 million contract to IBM for an all-digital computer for the Gemini project. Shortly after, engineers from IBM’s Federal Systems Unit in Owego, New York were put on the project. Rather than using integrated circuits that were still in the testing phase, the Gemini Digital Computer (GDC) used discrete semiconductor components, and for memory, it used ferrite magnetic cores originally developed for the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) defense system. The GDC weighed about 60 pounds and operated at more than 7,000 calculations per second. It also had an auxiliary tape memory system. As the programs exceeded the core memory capacity, the tape system was needed to install new programs in-flight. For example, the re-entry program needed to be installed in the core memory just before the descent and took about 6 minutes to load.

Overall, IBM delivered 20 of the 26-pound machines from 1963 to 1965 and solidified its reputation as a major contractor for the space program.[2] But the trip to the moon and back required a more sophisticated computer and NASA turned to Silicon Valley to provide the next generation of onboard computers.

The Apollo project used a vast number of mainframes and minicomputers for planning missions and calculating guidance and navigation (G&N) applications. Still, one of its most crucial objectives was to develop a new onboard computer system. Computers on the ground were able to monitor such information as cabin pressure and detect flight deviations via a data communications link. But these earthbound mainframes were insufficient for the complex requirements of this new goal. While many computations could be conducted on the ground and radioed to the spacecraft using NASA’s Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), it had been decided early that computational capacity was needed onboard.[3]

The determination that an onboard computer was needed for spaceflight occurred before President Kennedy’s 1961 declaration that landing on the moon would be a national goal. An onboard computer was wanted for several reasons. One – there was a fear that a hostile source might jam the radio signals transmitted to the spacecraft. Two – concerns were raised that multiple concurrent missions could saturate the communications system. Three – it was determined that manned interplanetary missions in the future would definitely require onboard computerization, and it was better to start testing such a system as soon as possible. Four – the physics of transmitting a signal to the moon and back resulted in a 1.5-second delay making quick decisions for a hazardous lunar landing improbable. “The choice, later in the program, of the lunar orbit rendezvous method over a direct flight to the Moon, further justified an on-board computer since the lunar orbit insertion would take place on the far side of the Moon, out of contact with the earth.”[4]

Like the Gemini Digital Computer, it was crucial to develop a computer system for the Apollo spacecraft that was small enough to minimize additional weight, yet powerful enough to coordinate complex activities onboard. A few months after Kennedy’s proclamation, NASA contracted with the MIT Instrumentation Lab for the design of the Apollo’s computer. The MIT lab had worked previously for the government on the guidance systems for the Polaris and Poseidon missiles and the team was moved almost in its entirety to the Apollo project. This was also the first year that Fairchild started serious production of the integrated chip. The ICs were still a very untested technology, but NASA’s commitment meant a nearly unlimited budget to ensure their reliability, low power consumption, as well as guaranteed availability over the duration of the Apollo project. NASA agreed to use Fairchild’s 3-input NOR gate ICs to construct the AGC, despite the high probability that new developments would soon eclipse this technology. NASA committed to the new “chips,” designing both onboard and ground equipment to use them.

However, the IC technology was unproven and required substantial support to transform them into a viable technology for the moon project. Through extensive testing, Fairchild, MIT, and NASA began to identify the main problems resulting in IC malfunctions and develop procedures to reduce and discard defective chips. Stress tests were used to submit the chips to high temperatures, centrifugal gravity forces, and extensive vibration. Early on, the major problem identified was poor workmanship. As a result, dedicated assembly lines were implemented to produce ICs only for the Apollo project’s computers. Apollo crewmembers were brought in to cement a relationship between the astronauts and assembly line workers to ensure high worker motivation. Posters were also displayed around the plant to remind workers of the historic importance of their toil. Afterward, MIT’s Instrumentation Lab conducted rigorous tests to ensure reliability and returned all defective chips. As a result, a failure rate of only 0.0040% per 1000 hours of operation was achieved.[5]

In May of 1962, MIT and NASA chose Massachusetts-based Raytheon, a major military electronics contractor, to build the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). Called the “Block I,” the first AGC was used on three Apollo space flights between August 1966 and April 1968. It used a digital display and keyboard, guided the vehicle in real-time, incorporated an all-digital design, and had a compact, protective casing. It operated at a basic machine cycle of 2.048MHz and had a RAM core of 2K. It could perform roughly 20 instructions per second.

When Raytheon built the 12 computers ordered by NASA, they used about 4000 integrated circuits purchased from Fairchild Semiconductor, a major portion of the world’s ICs.[6] Although initially quite expensive, the price of an IC dropped to $25 after Philco-Ford began providing them in 1964. The Block I was a transitional device, but it became an important part of the historical role of the Apollo space program.

A second AGC was designed for the final push to the Moon. A faster and lighter version was needed after mission plans called for the Lunar Module to land men on the Moon’s surface and return them back to the Command Module before returning to earth. While “Block I,” the first version, was a copy of the Polaris missile guidance computer, the second was built up on new integrated chip technology. The “Block II” was a more sophisticated device with a larger memory (37,000 words) and weighed only 31 kilograms. Furthermore, the very need to have the equipment be as light as possible for the Moon drop and extremely reliable for the long trip required the new version. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida guided by the AGC to its Moon destination. On July 20, the lunar module Eagle undocked from the command module Columbia and its astronauts guided its descent onto the Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility) where it touched down safely some three hours later.

Surprisingly, the chips used in the later Apollo flights were significantly out of date. It was more important for NASA that its technologies were dependable and fit into their existing systems rather than be significantly faster or conduct more instructions per second. Staying with the proven chips created stability and started a revenue base for Silicon Valley as it established itself as a proven technology. The “Block II” AGC with its early integrated chips remained somewhat static throughout its use during the six lunar landings, three Skylab missions, and the linking of the Apollo with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Plans to expand the computer to 16K of erasable memory and 65K of fixed memory were never implemented as the Apollo program was shut down after the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) in July 1975. The Space Shuttle would use the IBM AP-101 avionics computer, also used in the B-52 bomber and F-15 fighter and sharing similar architecture with the IBM System/360 mainframes.

While the military and other government funded programs (such as NSA and the CIA) would continue to support microprocessing advances, the private sector (particularly finance) would start to play an increasingly more important role. Wall Street and other financial institutions were in an automation crisis as paper-based transactions continued to accumulate. Volatility wracked the foreign exchange markets as currency controls were lifted in the early 1970s.

Although government spending would continue to support the microelectronics industry, new developments occurred in the 1970s that would drive commercial demand for silicon-based processing. First, international finance’s move away from the gold standard dramatically increased the corporate demand for computer resources. Second, the personal computer would create a new market for Silicon Valley’s fledgling microprocessing industry as computer hobbyists, business users, and then the Internet created a widespread market for devices enabled by this technology.

These new developments would be based on a dramatic new product, the “computer-on-a-chip” by Fairchild spin-off Intel. Instead of just transistor switches on an integrated circuit, this new development would begin to embed the different parts of a computer into the silicon. It was this so-called “microprocessor” that would make computers accessible to the public and general commerce.

Citation APA (7th Edition)

Pennings, A.J. (2016, April 13). Subsidizing Silicon. apennings.com https://apennings.com/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/the-cold-war/subsidizing-silicon-nasa-and-the-computer/

Notes

[1] NASA has excellent information on the historical aspects of the space program’s use and development of computers in its Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience at www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computers/ch1-1.html. Accessed on October 26, 2001.
[2] “Chapter One: The Gemini Digital Computer: First Machine in Orbit,” in its Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience at www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computers/Ch1-5.html. Accessed on October 26, 2001.
[3] Information on NASA’s data communications has been compiled and edited by Robert Godwin in The NASA Mission Reports, published by Ontario Canada’s Apogee Books.
[4] Again I am indebted to the online version of Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience at www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computers/Ch2-1.html. Information on the need for an on-board computer from “Chapter Two: Computers On Board the Apollo Spacecraft”, accessed on October 26, 2001.
[5] Nathan Ickes’s website on The Apollo Guidance Computer: Advancing Two Industries was a valuable resource given that many of the published books about the space program fail to investigate the importance of the computer for the program’s success and coincidentally, its impact on the computer industry. See http://web.mit.edu/nickes/www/sts035/agc/agc.html (no longer available). For information on Fairchild’s quality control procedures, see “Proving a Technology: Integrated Circuits in the AGC.”
[6] Information on Apollo AGC information garnered by Dr. Dobb’s One Giant Leap: The Apollo Guidance Computer. History of Computing #6. From www.ddj.com. Also the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has a valuable site on the Apollo Guidance Computer at www.nasm.edu/nasm/dsh/artifacts/GC-ApolloBlock1.htm. Both were accessed on October 26, 2001.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College in New York, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has also spent time as a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: science and technology studies, space systems, the cold war
Tags: AGC > Apollo > Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) > Fairchild > Gemini > ICs > integrated circuits > Intel > microprocessor > microprocessor revolution > NASA > Philco > Raytheon > Silicon Valley

The MAD Origins of the Computer Age

Posted on | April 11, 2016 | No Comments

It was the “missile gap” that would impregnate Silicon Valley with the purpose and capital to grow to its famed stature as the center of computer innovation in the world. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, when Robert S. McNamara was Secretary of Defense, the US undertook an enormous military buildup, with the intercontinental missile as its centerpiece. The policy of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) and specifically the advancements in the Minute Man II missile led to the development and refinement of silicon integrated circuits and ultimately the microprocessor “chip.”

The computing and network revolutions were powered by successive developments in information processing capabilities that were subsidized by extensive government spending and increasingly centralized in California’s “Valley of Heart’s Delight,” later known as “Silicon Valley.”

At the center of this transformation was an innovation developed by the telecommunications monopoly, AT&T. The government-regulated monopoly developed the first transistor in the 1940s at its New Jersey-based Bell Labs. This electronic switching technology would orchestrate the amazing machinations of the 1s and Os of the emerging digital age. William Shockley, who won a Nobel-prize for the AT&T sponsored invention, soon decided to return to his California home to set up a semiconductor company.

Shockley had been recruited back to the area by Frederick Terman, the Dean of the Engineering School at Stanford University. Terman was a protégé of Vannevar Bush, the major science and technology director of the New Deal and World War II, including the Manhattan Project that invented the atomic bomb. Terman designed a program of study and research at Stanford in electronics and spearheaded the creation of Stanford Research Park that leased land to high-tech firms. In the early 1950s, Lockheed set up its missile and aerospace subsidiary in the area. IBM also set up facilities for studying data storage during that time.

Shockley’s company did not achieve the success it desired, and some of the employees left and started up companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor (Later Intel), National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices, and Signetics. Luckily, history was on their side as the Sputnik satellite crisis almost immediately resulted in several government programs that targeted guidance miniaturization as a crucial component of the new rocketry programs. Transistors became the centerpiece of a set of technologies that would guide rocket-powered missiles, but also provide the processing power for modern computers.

The Minuteman intercontinental missile project was originally approved on February 27, 1958, about six weeks after Eisenhower requested funds to start ARPA. Both were in response to the previous autumn’s successful flights that delivered two USSR Sputnik satellites into space. The Soviets had captured many German V-2 rocket scientists after the World War II and quickly built up a viable space program. Meanwhile, they denoted an atomic bomb in August 1949 and in 1954 they successfully tested a hydrogen bomb, thousands of times more powerful than the atomic device. While the second of the Sputnik launches had only placed a small dog into space, the fear spread that the USSR could place a nuclear warhead on their rocket. Such a combination could rain a lethal force of radiation upon the US and its allies, killing millions within minutes.

About a year before, in late January 1957, the US had finally reached success with its own space program, using a modified Jupiter C rocket to carry the first satellite into space. Still, the 10.5-pound satellite was in no way capable of lifting the massive weight of a hydrogen warhead, not to mention guiding it to a specific target a half a world away. Sensing the momentousness of the task, Eisenhower started NASA later that year to garner additional support for the development of rocket technology by stirring the imagination of humans being launched into space.

The Minuteman was conceived as an intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM) capable of delivering a thermonuclear explosion thousands of miles from its origination. It was meant to be a mass-produced, quick-reacting response to the “perceived” Russia nuclear threat. Named after the American Revolutionary War’s volunteer militia who were ready to take up arms “at a minute’s notice”, the missile was a revolutionary military idea, using new advances in guidance and propulsion to deliver its deadly ordinance.

Eisenhower left plans for a force of about 40 Atlas missiles and six Polarises at sea; in less than a year Kennedy and McNamara planned 1,900 missiles, consisting primarily of the 1,200 Minuteman missiles and 656 Polarises. Counting the bombers, the United States would have 3,455 warheads ready to fire on the Soviet Union by 1967, according to McNamara’s secret Draft Presidential Memorandum on strategic forces of September.[2]

McNamara was an intense intellectual and considered one of the “Whiz Kids” brought in by Kennedy as part of the promise of the new administration to recruit the “best and the brightest.” He was extremely good with statistics and steeped in management accounting at Harvard. During World War II, he left a position at Harvard to work in the Statistical Control Office of the Army Air Corps where he successfully planned bombing raids with mathematical techniques used in operations research (OR).

After the war, McNamara and other members of his office went to work at Ford Motor Company. Using these OR techniques, he achieved considerable success at the automobile company, ultimately rising to its top.[3] When McNamara was offered the job of Secretary of Treasury by the new Kennedy administration, it is reported that he replied he had more influence on interest rates at his current job as President of Ford. He later took a job as Secretary of Defense. Just a few months into his tenure, he ordered a major buildup of nuclear forces. This resolve came in spite of the fact that intelligence reports indicated that Soviet forces had been overestimated, the so-called “missile gap.”

McNamara was originally from Oakland, just a few miles northeast of the famed “Silicon Valley” and set out to transform US military strategy. In response to a RAND report that US bombers were vulnerable to a Communist first strike, he ordered the retirement of “most of the 1,292 old B-47 bombers and the 19 old B-58s, leaving ‘only’ 500 B-52s, to the surprise and anger of the Air Force.” He stopped production of the B-70 bomber that was estimated to cost $20 billion over the next ten years. Instead, he pushed the Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile project and continued to refine the notion of “massive retaliation” coined by Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1954.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 seriously challenged this notion when the USSR began installing theatre-size SS-4, SS-5, and R-12 missiles on the Caribbean island in response to the deployment of US missiles in Turkey by the Eisenhower administration. When US surveillance revealed the missile sites, President Kennedy announced that any attack on the US from Cuba would be considered an attack by the USSR and would be responded to accordingly. He also ordered a blockade of the island nation, using the language of “quarantine” outlined by Roosevelt in 1937 in response to Nazi aggression.

On Oct 24, the Strategic Air Command elevated its alert status to Defense Condition 2 (DEF-CON 2), and as the USSR responded in kind, the world teetered on the brink of World War III. Last minute negotiations averted the catastrophe on October 28 when Premier Khrushchev agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba. Kennedy had offered in a secret deal to remove US missiles from Turkey. Perhaps not incidentally, the US Minuteman I program went operational on the same day.

The brains of the Minuteman I missile guidance system was the D-17B, a specialized computer designed by Autonetics. It contained an array of thousands of transistors, diodes, capacitors, and resistors designed to guide the warhead to its target. Guidance software was provided by TRW while the Strategic Air Command provided the actual targeting. Some 800 Minuteman-I missiles were manufactured and delivered by the time Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President in 1965. As the Vietnam War increased tensions between the US and its Communist rivals, research was initiated on new models of the Minuteman missile. While the first Minuteman ICBM program used older transistors for its guidance systems, the later Minuteman II used integrated circuits (ICs) that continued to miniaturize the guidance and other intelligent aspects of the missile by reducing the number of electronic parts.[4]

Submarines carrying nuclear missiles became an extraordinarily lethal force using the new guidance technology. The first successful launch of a guided Polaris missile took place July 20, 1960 from a submerged George Washington class submarine. The USS George Washington was the first fleet ballistic missile submarine, carrying sixteen missiles. President John F. Kennedy came on board 16 November to observe a Polaris A1 launch. He subsequently ordered 40 more subs. These submarine-based missiles required even more sophisticated guidance technology because they had to be launched from one of a multitude of geographical positions. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) like the Poseidon and Trident eventually developed capabilities that could destroy entire countries.

McNamara started the buildup under Kennedy, but President Johnson urged him to keep up the missile program, arguing that it was the Eisenhower and Republicans who had left the US in weak military position. McNamara himself felt that nuclear missiles had no military purpose, except to “deter one’s opponent from using them,” but he pressed for their development.[1] The missiles required a complex guidance system, however, one that drew on the trajectory of the transistor and then integrated circuits research. As the military philosophy of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) emerged, the result was a prolonged support of the semiconductor industry leading ultimately to the information technologies of the computer and the Internet.

Minuteman-II production and deployment began with the Johnson administration as it embraced the “Assured Destruction” policy advocated by McNamara. The new model could go farther, pack more deadly force, and pinpoint its targets more accurately. Consequently, it could be aimed at more targets from its silos in the upper Midwest, primarily Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, as well as South and North Dakota. Nicknamed “MAD” for Mutually Assured Destruction, the policy recognized the colossal destructive capabilities of even a single thermonuclear warhead. A second strike could inflict serious damage on the attacker even if only a few warheads survived a first strike. Furthermore, the attempts at both a first and second strike could initiate a nuclear winter, bringing eventual destruction to the entire planet.

Consequently, the defensive strategy changed to building as many warheads as possible and putting them in a variety of positions, both fixed and mobile. Minuteman II production increased dramatically, providing a boost to the new IC technology and the companies that produced them. The D-37C computer installed in the missile was built in the mid-1960s using both the established transistor technology used in the first model as well as small scale integrated circuits recently introduced. Minuteman II consumption of ICs provided the incentive to create volume production lines needed for the 4,000 ICs needed weekly for the MAD missile deployment.[5]

The Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and Apollo space programs soon gave Silicon Valley a “liftoff,” as they required thousands of transistors and then integrated circuits. The transition occurred as NASA’s manned and satellite space program demanded the highest quality computing components for its spacecraft. It actively subsidized integrated circuits, a risky new technology where transistors were incorporated into a single wafer or “chip.” By the time Neil Armstrong first stepped on the Moon, more than a million ICs had been purchased by NASA alone.[6] These would become integral to the minicomputer revolution that rocked Wall Street and other industries in the late 1960s.

Citation APA (7th Edition)

Pennings, A.J. (2016, April 11). The MAD Origins of the Computer Age. apennings.com https://apennings.com/how-it-came-to-rule-the-world/the-mad-origins-of-the-computer-age/

Notes

[1] Robert McNamara quoted in Deborah Shapley’s (1993) Promise and Power: a Biography of the Secretary of Defense. published by Little, Brown and Company.
[2] Shapley, D. (1993) Promise and Power. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. p. 108.
[3] Information on McNamara’s past from Paul Ewards, The Closed World.
[4] Information on Minuteman missiles provided by Dirk Hanson in The New Alchemists. p. 99.
[5] IC production lines from Ceruzzi, P.E. (2003) A History of Modern Computing. Second Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 187.
[6] Reid, T.R., (2001) The Chip. NY: Random House. P. 150.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College in New York, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has also spent time as a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: disruption, how IT came to rule the world, science and technology studies, space systems, the cold war
Tags: ARPA > AT&T > Cuban Missile Crisis > integrated circuits > intercontinental ballistic missile system (ICBM) > Jupiter C rocket > Minuteman intercontinental missile > Minuteman-II > Mutually Assured Destruction > operations research (OR) > Robert S. McNamara > Silicon Valley > transistors

Emerging Areas of Digital Media Expertise, Part 4: Business Acumen

Posted on | April 10, 2016 | No Comments

In previous posts, I discussed the importance of various skill sets in the emerging digital world: analytics and visualizations, design, global knowledge, technical, and the strategic communication aspects of digital media expertise.

The competitive world of digital activities requires proficiency in an extensive variety of marketing, graphic design, and digital production skills. The area of media management has emerged from broadcast media to embrace digital media, especially as the creative economy and its various manifestations: experience industries, cultural industries, and entertainment industries emerge as crucial parts of the global economy. In this post, I will discuss the centrality of commercial, entrepreneurial and management skills in today’s digital media environment.

Previously, those trained in media skills were primarily focused on the production of entertainment, educational, and cultural products and services. They were somewhat removed from business decisions unless they moved up to editorial or management positions later in their careers. With the transition to digital technologies and processes, business knowledge and media abilities are increasingly intertwined.

Some of the ways digital media production and business acumen overlap:

– Managing creative workers and digital innovation
– Assessing digital threats and opportunities
– Understanding global media and cultural trends
– Marketing content and producing multiple revenue streams
– Ensuring intellectual property rights and obtaining permissions
– Preparing digital content for local and global markets
– Working with diverse in-house and third party partners/vendors to construct working media-related applications
– Developing metrics for key performance, strategic, and management requirements
– Develop continuity plans in case of security, personnel, equipment or environmental failures
– Recruiting, managing and evaluating other key personnel
– Evaluating and implementing various e-payment solutions for both B2B and B2C operations
– Working with senior management and Board of Directors to establish current and long range goals, objectives, plans and policies
– Working with established creativity suppliers such as stars, independent producers, and agents
– Discerning how complex international legal environments influence intellectual property rights, consumer rights, privacy, and a various types of cybercrimes
– Manage remote projects and collaborate with colleagues and third party vendors via mediated conferencing
– Utilize project management skills and monitoring technologies such as Excel spreadsheets and methodologies such as SDLC waterfall, RAD, JAD, and Agile/Scrum
– Licensing and obtaining legal rights to merchandise and characters
– Assessing competitive advantages and barriers to entry
– Implement and monitor advertising and social media campaigns
– Anticipate the influence of macroeconomic events such as business cycles, inflation, as well as changes in interest rates and exchange rates on an organization’s sustainability

Leadership and management skills such as understanding how to facilitate teamwork among colleagues and third party partners/vendors to construct and commercialize working media-related applications are increasingly important. As enterprises and mission-based institutions flatten their organizational structures and streamline their work processes, fundamental knowledge about accounting, finance, logistics, marketing, and sales becomes more valuable.

Professional management certifications are a valuable qualification on contemporary resumes and represent valuable experience as well (4500 hours of project management work with a 4-year degree). Specific project management skills using Excel spreadsheets and the ability to monitor workflows using methodologies such as SDLC waterfall, RAD, JAD, and Agile/Scrum are also valuable to employers as are budgeting, change management, project control, risk assessment, scheduling, and vendor management. The ability to coordinate and manage remote projects with online teleconferencing and instant messaging capabilities is also crucial in a global environment to facilitate collaboration among colleagues, different business units and partnering B2B companies.

Last, but not least, sales expertise is in high demand in new media companies. Last year I was in San Francisco talking to a venture capitalist about needed skills and this category came up strongly. Sales success requires strong product knowledge, communication skills, planning abilities and self-management. Customer relations management has transformed sales management and with it modern retail and wholesale organizations. But just as significantly, customer expectations have risen to anticipate 24/7, global service from any point in the corporate operations.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea. Before joining SUNY, he taught at Hannam University in South Korea and from 2002-2012 was on the faculty of New York University. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, Marist College in New York, and Victoria University in New Zealand. He has also spent time as a Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Category: characteristics of digital media

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