Article

Article

Critique and Analysis

In this article, released in the May 2003 version of the  Harvard Business Review,  I analyze the evolution of data expertise in enterprise and display that it pursues a pattern strikingly alike to that of previous technologies like trains and electric driven power. For a short time span, as they are being constructed into the infrastructure of business, these "infrastructural technologies," as I call them, open possibilities for forward-looking businesses to gain powerful comparable advantages. But as their accessibility rises and their cost declines (Carr 2003) as they become ubiquitous - they become product inputs. From a strategic viewpoint, they become invisible; they no longer matter. The employees of HBR cast a vote "IT Doesn't Matter" the best article to emerge in the publication throughout 2003. A sequel to this article, titled The End of Corporate Computing, seems in the Spring 2005 topic of the MIT Sloan Management Review.

Judging from his remarks, I'm not certain Mr. Barrett really read the article (I don't accuse him; I'm certain he's busy). As I make clear in the part, the IT infrastructure is really absolutely crucial to competitiveness, especially at the local and commerce level. (Carr 2003) My issue, although, is that it is no longer a source of benefit at the firm grade - it doesn't endow one-by-one businesses to differentiate themselves in a significant way from their competitors. Essential to competitiveness but inconsequential to strategic advantage: that's why IT is best examined (and managed) as a commodity.

He characteristics my article as well as Craig Barrett's comments on it. He makes two critical points that are occasionally being lost in the present debate: it is likely to acquiesce that expertise can consign very broad productivity profits without inevitably consigning higher earnings or comparable profits for one-by-one businesses, a ...