![]() ![]() Carr kept the controversy bubbling on his own Web site. ![]() HBR got so many responses that it set aside a portion of its Web site to accommodate them, and Mr. Carr Is Silence Killing Your Company?Īnd the reaction continued. HBR Case Study r0305a Leadership Development: Perk or Priority? Kesner HBR at Large r0305b IT Doesn’t Matter Nicholas G. Keep the faith in IT’s power to deliver productivity gains, cost savings, and competitive advantage. Intel’s Craig Barrett, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, IBM’s Sam Palmisano, and others felt compelled to weigh in with varying degrees of fervor to reassure corporate customers. Carr was branded a heretic by many technologists, consultants, and - especially - computer industry executives. “That is exactly what is happening to information technology today.” The reaction was swift. He declared that information technology is inevitably going the way of the railroads, the telegraph, and electricity, which all became, in economic terms, just ordinary factors of production, or “commodity inputs.” “From a strategic standpoint, they became invisible they no longer mattered,” Mr. Carr, then editor at large of HBR and now a consultant and author, was that there is nothing all that special about information technology (IT). For those who may have missed it or might welcome a reminder, the central point of the essay, written by Nicholas G. The resulting debate has been impassioned and often revealing, and is still going on. The provocative title of the article and its timing - at the tail end of a long slump in technology spending - ensured that a dustup would ensue. 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. Among other things, IT improves productivity by reducing communications, search, and transaction costs, and by automating all sorts of tasks previously done by humans. Carr is not arguing that information technology doesn’t matter. A debate on the strategic importance of IT for organisations –Nicholas Carr (2003) IT Doesn’t Matter. ![]()
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