He also clarifies that he does not mean that information itself doesn’t matter, nor does he mean that the people using the technology don’t matter. By wiring their plants and installing electric motors in their machines, they were able to dispense with the cumbersome, inflexible, and costly gearing systems, gaining an important efficiency advantage over their slower-moving competitors. “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr Critical Essay Analysis of Article The main thrust of the article “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr is the notion that IT (Information Technology) is no longer a means of competitive advantage but rather has become relegated to the status of a utility. But with companies struggling to boost profits and the entire world economy flirting with deflation, it would also be dangerous to assume it can’t. 1- Reflection on the article of Carr In May 2003, Harvard Business Review (HBR), a magazine mainly addressed to business people in general such as managers, analysts and strategists etc., and IT constituencies in particular such as vendors, researchers, engineers etc., published a revolutionary article written by Nicholas Carr entitled “IT doesn't Matter”. It was the rare executive who would let his fingers touch a keyboard, much less incorporate information technology into his strategic thinking. Netgear dg834g pdf manual Doesnt Matter, published in the May.Matter by Nicholas G. As information technologys power and ubiquity have. It Doesn't Matter Nicholas Carr Photograph by Opto When the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published “IT Doesn’t Matter” in May 2003, the point was to start an argument, or, as they say in the more genteel world of academia, a debate. Myriad other companies have gained important advantages through the innovative deployment of IT. Ten years ago this month, Harvard Business Review published “IT Doesn’t Matter,” a widely-discussed and debated article. That’s not to say that infrastructural technologies don’t continue to influence competition. It takes one side of an argument that’s undeniably urgent and important to business leaders. He examines the evolution of IT and argues that it follows a pattern very similar to that of earlier technologies like railroads and electricity. Even the way the technology is used begins to become standardized, as best practices come to be widely understood and emulated. Smart manufacturers, however, saw that one of the great advantages of electric power is that it is easily distributable—that it can be brought directly to workstations. Similarly, if an industry lags in harnessing the power of the technology, it will be vulnerable to displacement. The rapidly increasing affordability of IT functionality has not only democratized the computer revolution, it has destroyed one of the most important potential barriers to competitors. In addition to being passive in their purchasing, companies have been sloppy in their use of IT. Developed in-house, the innovative system used proprietary software running on a mainframe computer, and hospital purchasing agents accessed it through terminals at their sites. But it’s mistaken. Restricting employees’ ability to save files indiscriminately and indefinitely may seem distasteful to many managers, but it can have a real impact on the bottom line. Having or doing something that they. Railroad tracks, telegraph wires, power lines—all were laid or strung in a frenzy of activity (a frenzy so intense in the case of rail lines that it cost hundreds of laborers their lives). For most business applications today, the benefits of customization would be overwhelmed by the costs of isolation. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the computational power of a microprocessor increased by a factor of 66,000. As always, a company’s fate is tied to broader forces affecting its region and its industry. With the opportunities for gaining strategic advantage from information technology rapidly disappearing, many companies will want to take a hard look at how they invest in IT and manage their systems. The near-infinite scalability of many IT functions, when combined with technical standardization, dooms most proprietary applications to economic obsolescence. As a starting point, here are three guidelines for the future: Studies show that the companies with the biggest IT investments rarely post the best financial results. Instead of aggressively seeking an edge through IT, manage IT’s costs and risks with a frugal hand and pragmatic eye—despite any renewed hype about its strategic value. It underpins the operations of individual companies, ties together far-flung supply chains, and, increasingly, links businesses to the customers they serve. Hardly a dollar or a euro changes hands anymore without the aid of computer systems. If vendors balk, explore cheaper solutions, including bare-bones network PCs. Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf DOWNLOAD VINT Symposium in 2008 edit3. it is important.Nicholas G.Carr’s “IT Doesn’t Matter,”published in the May 2003 issue,falls into the third category. In addition to enabling new, more efficient operating methods, infrastructural technologies often lead to broader market changes. Today, no one would dispute that information technology has become the backbone of commerce. The telegraph system spread even more swiftly. Example: Businesses buy 100 million+ PCs annually—yet most workers use PCs for simple applications that require a fraction of their computing power. IT Doesn’t Matter An article by Nicholas G. Carr published in the Harvard Business Review in ... Carr proposes that IT has ceased to be the strategic advantage creator that it once was and that companies need to sit up and take notice of this fact before its too late. IT Doesn't Matter Analysis 7-21-03.PDF. Best practices are now quickly built into software or otherwise replicated. Many technology vendors are already repositioning themselves and their products in response to the changes in the market. Today, smart IT users hang back from the cutting edge, buying only after standards and best practices solidify. But the opportunities for gaining IT-based advantages are already dwindling. The staff of HBR voted “IT Doesn’t Matter” the best article to appear in the magazine. Most have appointed chief information officers to their senior management teams, and many have hired strategy consulting firms to provide fresh ideas on how to leverage their IT investments for differentiation and advantage. A distinction needs to be made between proprietary technologies and what might be called infrastructural technologies. It suddenly became economical to ship finished products, rather than just raw materials and industrial components, over great distances, and the mass consumer market came into being. HBR AT LARGE • IT Doesn’t Matter Nicholas G. Carr is HBR’s editor-at-large.He edited The Digital Enterprise,a collec-tion of HBR articles published by Harvard Business School Press in 2001,and has written for the Financial Times,Business 2.0,and the Industry Standardin addition to HBR.He can be reached at ncarr@hbsp.harvard.edu. This war for scale, combined with the continuing transformation of IT into a commodity, will lead to the further consolidation of many sectors of the IT industry. And waiting will decrease your risk of buying something technologically flawed or doomed to rapid obsolescence. But it’s not just the software that is replicable. In fact, its mix of characteristics guarantees particularly rapid commoditization. Affordable and accessible to everyone, it no longer offers strategic value to anyone. Personal computers are a good example. Of the essay, written by Nicholas G. Carr, then editor at large of. From 1978 to 1983, AHS’s sales and profits rose at annual rates of 13% and 18%, respectively—well above industry averages. Today, no one would dispute that information technology has become the backbone of commerce. Nicholas carr it doesn't matter What these early efforts dont show is the full extent and power of a true. In fact, the opposite is usually true. The smartest users of technology—here again, Dell and Wal-Mart stand out—stay well back from the cutting edge, waiting to make purchases until standards and best practices solidify. … IT is, first of all, a transport mechanism—it carries digital information just as railroads carry goods and power grids carry electricity. Many commentators have drawn parallels between the expansion of IT, particularly the Internet, and the rollouts of earlier technologies. Carr’s book inspired me to write an essay titled “Does. Now that IT has become the dominant capital expense for most businesses, there’s no excuse for waste and sloppiness. It was no coincidence that the largest U.S. manufacturer of nuts and bolts at the turn of the century, Plumb, Burdict, and Barnard, located its factory near Niagara Falls in New York, the site of one of the earliest large-scale hydroelectric power plants. The way you approach IT investment and management will need to change dramatically. Indeed, in an ironic, if predictable, twist, the closed nature and outdated technology of AHS’s system turned it from an asset to a liability. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending. 92 0 obj <> endobj 108 0 obj <>/Filter/FlateDecode/ID[]/Index[92 26]/Info 91 0 R/Length 82/Prev 181665/Root 93 0 R/Size 118/Type/XRef/W[1 2 1]>>stream IT Doesn't Matter Analysis 7-21-03.PDF. At the same time, the buildout forces users to adopt universal technical standards, rendering proprietary systems obsolete. Doesn't Matter by Nicholas G. Carr As information technology's power and ubiquity have grown, its strategic importance has diminished. h�b```f``Ra`a`P�b�g@ ~�+sltd`�V����cY��ۿ��L``p���1��w� Nevertheless, companies continue to roll out across-the-board hardware and software upgrades. Even worse, the flood of capital led to enormous overcapacity, devastating entire industries. And since the 1980s, more than 280 million miles of fiber-optic cable have been installed—enough, as BusinessWeek recently noted, to “circle the earth 11,320 times.” (See the exhibit “The Sprint to Commoditization.”). But the veneration of IT goes much deeper than dollars. Why write your own application for word processing or e-mail or, for that matter, supply-chain management when you can buy a ready-made, state-of-the-art application for a fraction of the cost? “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr Critical Essay Analysis of Article The main thrust of the article “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr is the notion that IT (Information Technology) is no longer a means of competitive advantage but rather has become relegated to the status of a … Studies of corporate IT spending consistently show that greater expenditures rarely translate into superior financial results. It Doesn T Matter Nicholas Carr Pdf. As the first worldwide depression took hold, economic malaise covered much of the globe. IT has become a commodity, and therefore has no more strategic advantage in and of itself. Nicholas Carr Does It Matter Pdf Reader. When electric generators first became available, many manufacturers simply adopted them as a replacement single-point source, using them to power the existing system of pulleys and gears. A year ago, Harvard Business Review published a now infamous article called “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Its author, the magazine’s then executive editor Nicholas G. Carr, argued that information technology no longer gives businesses a competitive edge. They are becoming costs of doing business that must be paid by all but provide distinction to none. In IT’s earlier days, forward-looking firms trumped competitors through innovative deployment of IT; for example, Federal Express’s package-tracking system and American Airlines’ Sabre reservation system. For most companies, just staying in business will require big outlays for IT. If it wanted to, that company could just build proprietary lines between its suppliers, its factories, and its distributors and run its own locomotives and railcars on the tracks. jpg Nicholas G. 2, Carr emailed Superintendent Donna BurgeTetrick, After a long internal discussion we have identified an opportunity for Nicholas County Schools to excel. But, for the broader economy, the value produced by such an arrangement would be trivial compared with the value that would be produced by building an open rail network connecting many companies and many buyers. First, IT’s power is outstripping most of the business needs it fulfills. More and more threats in the form of technical glitches, service outages, and security breaches. And many of the major suppliers of corporate IT, including Microsoft, IBM, Sun, and Oracle, are battling to position themselves as dominant suppliers of “Web services”—to turn themselves, in effect, into utilities. And like any transport mechanism, it is far more valuable when shared than when used in isolation. They let their impatient competitors shoulder the high costs of experimentation, and then they sweep past them, spending less and getting more. Doesn’t Matter,” Nicholas G. Carr introduced the idea that information tech-nology (IT) does not provide a competitive advantage to companies in a strate-gic manner. In Continental Europe, there were just 2,000 miles of telegraph wires in 1849; 20 years later, there were 110,000. Idalene F.Kesner HBR at Large r0305b IT Doesn’t Matter Nicholas G.Carr. And because it was proprietary to AHS, it effectively locked out competitors. If so, you’re not alone. h�bbd``b`�$��Nw?�`�"�@�+�D\[AH�R ��$xu��8H�q&F�� � ��~ �� endstream endobj startxref 0 %%EOF 117 0 obj <>stream Then they sweep past them, paying less while getting more. I’m secretly hoping to one day see a Nicholas Carr book on “Does it MATTER. What really doesn’t matter, he says, is the no-longer-proprietary technology infrastructure for storing, processing, and transmitting information. Of doing business that must be paid by.IT Doesnt Matter. By that measure, Nicholas Carr cut into the heart of IT professionals in his seminal paper, IT Doesn't Matter, arguing that IT had become commodified to the point that it offered little competitive advantage. But the greatest IT risk is overspending—putting your company at a cost disadvantage. In 1965, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, less than 5% of the capital expenditures of American companies went to information technology. The introduction of electric power again provides a good example. The resulting economies of scale allowed them to crush the small, local plants that until then had dominated manufacturing. The operational risks associated with IT are many—technical glitches, obsolescence, service outages, unreliable vendors or partners, security breaches, even terrorism—and some have become magnified as companies have moved from tightly controlled, proprietary systems to open, shared ones. In 2000,nearly half of U.S.corporate capital spending went to information technology.Then the spending col- It’s no surprise, given these characteristics, that IT’s evolution has closely mirrored that of earlier infrastructural technologies. It Doesn T Matter Nicholas Carr Pdf. Most of the major business-technology vendors, from Microsoft to IBM, are trying to position themselves as IT utilities, companies that will control the provision of a diverse range of business applications over what is now called, tellingly, “the grid.” Again, the upshot is ever greater homogenization of IT capabilities, as more companies replace customized applications with generic ones. It’s a reasonable assumption, even an intuitive one. So cheap that it doesnt matter that theyre largely. He also clarifies that he does not mean that information itself doesn’t matter, nor does he mean that the people using the technology don’t matter. In 2000,nearly half of U.S.corporate capital spending went to information technology.Then the spending col- IT Doesn't Matter magazine article. $4.25. But those cases are becoming rarer and rarer as IT capabilities become more homogenized. It Doesnt Matter Nicholas G Carr. Big hardware and software suppliers have become very good at parceling out new features and capabilities in ways that force companies into buying new computers, applications, and networking equipment much more frequently than they need to. Given the rapid pace of technology’s advance, delaying IT investments can be another powerful way to cut costs—while also reducing a firm’s chance of being saddled with buggy or soon-to-be-obsolete technology. It Doesn't Matter Nicholas Carr Photograph by Opto When the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published “IT Doesn’t Matter” in May 2003, the point was to start an argument, or, as they say in the more genteel world of academia, a debate. N 1968, a young Intel engineer named Ted Hoff found a way to put the cir- cuits necessary for computer process- Even if that’s true, the picture may not be as bleak as it seems for vendors, at least those with the foresight and skill to adapt to the new environment. They need to prepare themselves for technical glitches, outages, and security breaches, shifting their attention from opportunities to vulnerabilities. Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage expands and extends the arguments in Nicholas Carr’s explosive Harvard Business Review article “ IT Doesn’t Matter.”. “Optimism about a future of indefinite progress gave way to uncertainty and a sense of agony,” wrote historian D.S. IT Doesn’t Matter Zach Evans. What really doesn’t matter, he says, is the no-longer-proprietary technology infrastructure for storing, processing, and transmitting information. Moreover, the standardized nature of infrastructural technologies often leads to the establishment of lucrative monopolies and oligopolies. In Does IT Matter?, Carr argues that IT has become a commodity, and because the very nature of strategy requires differentiation, IT cannot pos. What makes a resource truly strategic—what gives it the capacity to be the basis for a sustained competitive advantage—is not ubiquity but scarcity. Although more complex and malleable than its predecessors, IT has all the hallmarks of an infrastructural technology. In 1968, a young Intel engineer named Ted Hoff found a way to put the circuits necessary for computer processing onto a tiny piece of silicon. Nicholas carr it doesn't matter What these early efforts dont show is the full extent and power of a true. In his HBR article, 'IT Doesn't Matter,' Nicholas Carr has stirred up quite a bit of controversy around IT's role as strategic business differentiator. His invention of the microprocessor spurred a series of technological breakthroughsdesktop computers, local and wide area networks, enterprise software, and the Internetthat have transformed the business world. Virtually all companies today continue to spend heavily on electricity and phone service, for example, and many manufacturers continue to spend a lot on rail transport. As many experts have pointed out, the overinvestment in information technology in the 1990s echoes the overinvestment in railroads in the 1860s. A few companies may still be able to wrest advantages from highly specialized applications that don’t offer strong economic incentives for replication, but those firms will be the exceptions that prove the rule. In the mid-1800s, when America started to lay down rail lines in earnest, it was already possible to transport goods over long distances—hundreds of steamships plied the country’s rivers. He examines the evolution of IT and argues that it follows a pattern very similar to that of earlier technologies like railroads and electricity. Just a few months ago, at the 2003 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Joy, the chief scientist and cofounder of Sun Microsystems, posed what for him must have been a painful question: “What if the reality is that people have already bought most of the stuff they want to own?” The people he was talking about are, of course, businesspeople, and the stuff is information technology. It is, simply, overspending. 17��Lɓ��I����x>FR��'&��mBʹm�1��.&%r;�8:X;:::$:���`1< ���lG�@��)-H��(Xd'/���*W!� ���(q��9n��y�Ջz%+VE�dM���!ӑ �D� uKJ� endstream endobj 93 0 obj <> endobj 94 0 obj <> endobj 95 0 obj <>stream His argument is based on the assumption that in the early days companies could get a strategic advantage, but that nowadays IT cannot give those advantages anymore. Reviewing Nicholas Carr "IT Doesn't matter" Sravan Pathipati IT doesn’t matter Argument 1: It’s not ubiquity but scarcity that gives an IT firm the competitive advantage Sure every firm now has access to the main functions of IT, database management, data … AHS gained a true competitive advantage by capitalizing on characteristics of infrastructural technologies that are common in the early stages of their buildouts, in particular their high cost and lack of standardization. For that matter, supply-chain management when you can buy a ready-made. These applications have been technologically mature for years; they require only a fraction of the computing power provided by today’s microprocessors. Dell has succeeded by exploiting the commoditization of the PC market and is now extending that strategy to servers, storage, and even services. Separate essential investments from discretionary, unnecessary, or counterproductive ones. The arrival of the Internet has accelerated the commoditization of IT by providing a perfect delivery channel for generic applications. But history shows that the power of an infrastructural technology to transform industries always diminishes as its buildout nears completion. IT Doesn’t Matter An article by Nicholas G. Carr published in the Harvard Business Review in. 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