Slowly, the international computing industry shifted the emphasis from hardware (in which Israel had no comparative advantage) to software products (in which human capital plays a larger role). The country became one of the first nations to compete in global software markets. By the 1980s a diverse set of software firms had developed. Each found niches which were not dominated by US firms and between 1984 and 1991 "pure" software exports increased from $5 million to $110 million. Many of the important ideas here were developed by graduates of Mamram, the Israeli computer corps, established by the IDF in the 1960s.