WHY I.T. MATTERS

摘要

A year ago, Harvard Business Review published a now infamous article called "IT Doesn't Matter." Its author, the magazine's then executive editor Nicholas G. Carr, argued that information technology no longer gives businesses a competitive edge. Carr called information technology managers impatient, wasteful, passive, and lured by the chorus of hype about the so-called strategic value of IT, Harvard Business Review has 243,000 extremely influential readers. So if it publishes an article saying that information technology doesn't matter, then an awful lot of important business leaders are going to believe it. And if they do, they'll run their companies―and our economy―into a ditch. Many commentators have debunked Carr's article since it appeared last year. So many in fact that I feel like Elizabeth Taylor's ninth husband: I know what to do, but how to make it interesting? But Carr's article just won't stay debunked. And now he has expanded his thesis into a new book called Does IT Matter?, which the Harvard Business School Press published in April. The question-style title hints at some backpedaling, but Carr's point is basically unchanged―and it needs debunking yet again.