New technologies take time to spread

Anthem,  a health insurer whose plans cover more than 45 million people, said digital technology had spared its call centres from having to answer an estimated 10 million customer service calls.

Building the technical capability is just the beginning. It takes time for new technologies to spread and for people to know how to best use them. For example, it took the electric motor forty years before productivity gains were realised in mass production. Likewise, the personal computer took off in the 1980s, but economic productivity only surged in the second half of the 1990s.