Video"Cold-Eyed and Clear-Headed"
[Managers] are likely to face difficult and complex strategic questions in the months and years ahead. Is our company properly positioned in our industry or do we need to change the role or roles we play? Will competitors find it easier to replicate the capabilities that once distinguished us? Should the size or scope of our organization change? Should we forge new or different relationships with other companies? When the business infrastructure changes, the chances and the costs of strategic missteps grow.
As managers grapple with these operational, organizational, and strategic challenges, they should take particular care to rid themselves of the illusions that new technologies often inspire — and that have been a particular hallmark of what has come to be called the digital age. Although it's increasingly unlikely that IT will give individual businesses an advantage, those executives with the steadiest, least distorted view of IT's changing role will be able to make smarter, sounder choices than their less cold-eyed and clear-headed rivals. And that in itself can be the basis for a strong and durable competitive advantage.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Excerpted from Does IT Matter? by Nicholas G. Carr. Copyright 2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
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