For the first time in history, women have the opportunity to play a major and visible role in a social transformation of potentially monumental proportions. The extensive reach and penetration of information technology into virtually every area of society creates enormous opportunities for women. But women's lack of representation in IT design roles may prevent them from capitalizing on these opportunities.

This paper argues that social capital is a necessary, although not sufficient, enabler of effective public-private partnerships and of a new, more collaborative style of innovation policy, although its significance for science and technology policy, has yet to be assimilated by most policy-makers.

The Internet, World Wide Web, and a host of related technologies have revolutionized the potential to conceptualize and use information and to design organizations, institutions, and governance arrangements in wholly new ways. Yet with this new potential, change agents encounter governments “as they are,” that is, governments in political economies with distinct structures; in cultures with rich histories and traditions; in sets of organizations characterized by complex, interlocking processes; and in institutional environments composed of sedimentary layers of legislation, practices, and politics.