New economy is a buzzword to describe new, high-growth industries that are on the cutting edge of technology and are believed to be the driving force of economic growth and productivity. A new economy was first declared in the late 1990s as hi-tech tools, particularly the Internet and increasingly powerful computers, made their way into the consumer and business marketplace. The new economy was seen as a shift from a manufacturing and commodity-based economy to one that used technology to create new products and services at a rate that the traditional manufacturing economy could not match.