You might have heard this somewhere before...

(By Richard Holway 9.00am 23rd June 09) Reproduced from George O'Connor's (Panmure Gordon) morning news.

Tom Siebel was interviewed about how he's spending his money in the Mercury News.

Q Do you have much invested in the tech industry?

A "No. It's a segment that from 1980 to 2000 grew at a 17% compounded annual growth rate, from virtually nothing to a business that became about $1.3 trillion. And I was able to participate in that process. It was the experience of a lifetime. That being said, I think information technology as an industry is likely to grow going forward at about the rate of the economy. I just do not see the kind of innovation that we saw in the last two decades of the last century. In many respects, many of the interesting problems that we set out to solve have been solved.”

Readers might recall similarities here with Holway's "IT's all over now?" speech in 2002 which caused so much controversy at the time... Bluntly I now think that IT will decline compared with the rate of growth of the economy.

But my bulging bag of brand new tech goodies shows the rights and wrongs of Siebel's views. Absolutely right that I now get far "More for Less". Totally wrong in his view that the pace of innovation is slowing.