Investing in IT for Competitive Advantage
In 2008, Brynjolfsson and McAfee
published a study
in the
Harvard Business Review
on the role of IT in competitive advantage, entitled “Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference.” Their study confirmed that IT
can
play a role in competitive advantage, if deployed wisely. In their study, they draw three conclusions
:
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First, the data show that IT has sharpened differences among companies instead of reducing them. This reflects the fact that while companies have always varied widely in their ability to select, adopt, and exploit innovations, technology has accelerated and amplified these differences.
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Second, good management matters: Highly qualified vendors, consultants, and IT departments might be necessary for the successful implementation of enterprise technologies themselves, but the real value comes from the process innovations that can now be delivered on those platforms. Fostering the right innovations and propagating them widely are both executive responsibilities – ones that can’t be delegated.
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Finally, the competitive shakeup brought on by IT is not nearly complete, even in the IT-intensive US economy. We expect to see these altered competitive dynamics in other countries, as well, as their IT investments grow.
Information systems can be used for competitive advantage, but they must be used strategically. Organizations must understand how they want to differentiate themselves and then use all the elements of information systems (hardware, software, data, people, and process) to accomplish that differentiation.