It Doesn't Matter Case Study Questions

1. Which of the points of view in response to Carr’s article (the letters to the editor that follow the article) do you find most compelling and why?

For the most part, I agreed with most of the points made on the response letters to Carr’ article “IT Doesn’t Matter”, but the main points I found most compelling where those brought up by John S. Brown and John Hagel, III and Paul A. Strassman’s letters. They essentially reinforced the same themes common to the majority of the response letters:

(1) IT investments alone without an organization ready and skilled to embrace new practices or exploiting the new capabilities brought upon will not be able to extract the most value from the investment.

(2) Aligning IT investments to the company’s strategic long-term view allows management to focus on the skills and business practices required to achieve that goal.

(3) Comparing information technologies with the rail road and power industries, as a transport technology, is unfair and misunderstood given IT’s evolving capabilities. Additionally, the commoditization of computer hardware rather than reduce strategic differentiation, in fact, opens doors to new improvements and innovations in products, services and/or processes.

(4) Vendor solutions based on industry “best practices” can provide great value to companies looking to improve transactional and business-wide processes; but trying to apply a generic approach to unique and differentiating processes will not always lead to great results, especially if you rely on them for a strategic benefit.

Companies whose organization understands the company’s goals and drives a very focus enterprise around the tools and skills set required to achieve it usually obtain strategic competitive advantages. Examples of the types of companies I am referring to are Wal-Mart and it’s impressive expertise in supply chain systems and processes, or Amazon and cloud computing. Thus, IT investments that are aligned with company objectives typically have the highest rate of return. The key to maximizing IT’s performance is that these investments can’t occur in a vacuum. The new capabilities that the investment confers must be introduced into the organization’s day-to-day processes and activities or the investment will have no chance to be adapted. This in some cases will require a change in how the organization does things. Ultimately, it is the way companies organize work, systems and people what truly drives strategic differentiation, not an IT implementation.

2. How were economists able to measure the relationship between IT and productivity? Given the evidence you have seen, how do you think the two are related?

While economists looked at this relationship from a macroeconomic and microeconomic standpoint, it was at the firm-level that they were able to efficiently measure this relationship via