Fundamentals of Business

According to some definitions

According to some definitions, the quaternary sector also includes all other pure services services, such as the entertainment industry.

The contrast between primary, secondary, and tertiary industries can also be seen at the country level. Advanced economies such as the United Kingdom have a mix of industries, primary, secondary, and tertiary, but with an overwhelming emphasis on the tertiary sector. In contrast, many poorer nations still depend for their livelihoods on primary industries such as minerals or agriculture.

More details about the various phases of economic development follow. As this process was far from being homogenous geographically, the balance between these sectors differs widely among the various regions of the world. Tertiary sector has moved into different Phases since the 1970s as shown below;

Information Age (1971 – 1991)
is a name given to a period after the industrial age and before the Knowledge Economy. Information Age is a term applied to the period where information rapidly propagated, more narrowly applying to the 1980s onward. Under conventional economic theory, the Information Age also heralded the era where information was a scarce resource and its capture and distribution generated competitive advantage.

Microsoft became one of the largest companies in the world based on its influence in creating the underlying mechanics to facilitate information distribution. One could argue, though, that it actually began during the later half of the 19th century with the invention of the telephone and telegraphy. It is often used in conjunction with the term post industrial society. When information ceased being scarce, the Knowledge Economy commenced. The Knowledge Economy started around 1992 and continued to approximately 2002.

The current economic era is defined as the Intangible Economy. In the Intangible Economy, four factors of production - knowledge assets (what people know and put into use), collaboration assets (who people interact with to create value), engagement assets (the level of energy and commitment of people), and time quality (how quickly value is created) are the four key resources from which economic activity and competitive advantage are primarily derived and delivered today. It is helpful to understand that Google is now a serious competitor to Microsoft as it relies on Intangible Economy principles to run its operations.