It Does Not Matter Does IT
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IT Does Not Matter…Or, Does IT?
Has IT Moved From a Strategic to a Purely Tactical Function?
By Deepak Sarup, FCA, CISA hen the Harvard Business Review published an article with the catchy title “IT Doesn’t Matter,” it did not just create a storm in the proverbial teacup.
It caused a raging tempest all across the US trillion-dollar IT industry. Harvard dons, well-known consultants, chief information officers (CIOs) of large enterprises and, most of all, titans of the IT industry took umbrage at the thrust of the article. For almost all of them, not only does IT matter, but it matters deeply!
The fact that the scribe in question, Nicholas Carr, was until then a little-known editor-at-large with the Harvard Business
Review seemed irrelevant. What caused consternation was not so much who wrote the article, or even what was written, but where it had been published. After all, as a prolific opinion leader, this management magazine is not renowned for publishing hugely controversial items; just by publishing this article, there was the implicit suggestion that the author had somehow uncovered a valid proposition.
In fairness to Carr, many people who objected to the article seemed to have, subconsciously or otherwise, mistinterpreted
Carr’s analysis. The somewhat tongue-in-cheek title did not help much. As the editor of the Harvard Business Review,
Thomas Stewart, noted in the following month’s edition:
W
In this instance, the most common misperception is that the article says that IT is dead and that it will not continue to be a source of dramatic, even transformational, change. It doesn’t say that. Instead, it says that the odds are that the benefits of such changes will inure to whole industries rather than any one competitor. Instead of seeking advantage through technology, Carr argues, companies should manage IT defensively—watching costs and avoiding risks.1
IT Does Not Matter…Or, Does IT?
Has IT Moved From a Strategic to a Purely Tactical Function?
By Deepak Sarup, FCA, CISA hen the Harvard Business Review published an article with the catchy title “IT Doesn’t Matter,” it did not just create a storm in the proverbial teacup.
It caused a raging tempest all across the US trillion-dollar IT industry. Harvard dons, well-known consultants, chief information officers (CIOs) of large enterprises and, most of all, titans of the IT industry took umbrage at the thrust of the article. For almost all of them, not only does IT matter, but it matters deeply!
The fact that the scribe in question, Nicholas Carr, was until then a little-known editor-at-large with the Harvard Business
Review seemed irrelevant. What caused consternation was not so much who wrote the article, or even what was written, but where it had been published. After all, as a prolific opinion leader, this management magazine is not renowned for publishing hugely controversial items; just by publishing this article, there was the implicit suggestion that the author had somehow uncovered a valid proposition.
In fairness to Carr, many people who objected to the article seemed to have, subconsciously or otherwise, mistinterpreted
Carr’s analysis. The somewhat tongue-in-cheek title did not help much. As the editor of the Harvard Business Review,
Thomas Stewart, noted in the following month’s edition:
W
In this instance, the most common misperception is that the article says that IT is dead and that it will not continue to be a source of dramatic, even transformational, change. It doesn’t say that. Instead, it says that the odds are that the benefits of such changes will inure to whole industries rather than any one competitor. Instead of seeking advantage through technology, Carr argues, companies should manage IT defensively—watching costs and avoiding risks.1