Clark Ching points to an interesting Sloan Management Review article. I'd better go have a look at the local library. I think not, baby puppy: Do you have too much IT?
The Spring 2004 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review has an interest article, by Harvard Business School Associate Professor Andrew McAfee, who asks Do you have too much IT?
[snip]
He suggests 5 generic principles that we can all learn from the Inditex case:
- IT is an aid to judgement, not a substitute for it.
- Computerization is standardized and targeted.
- Technology initiatives begin from within.
- The process is the focus.
- Alignment is pervassive.
There was a lot of ruckus raised when Carr wrote the "Does IT Matter" article last year, and now he has a book with the same title.
This article above seems to say similar things. If you do something simply to follow the pack, there is no way you will gain advantage. That's why it's called "following the pack." Yes, you need to have a baseline of people, technology, process for business to survive. But it makes the most sense when these things operate as part of specific strategies and processes designed up front to create successful business.