In this case, the angry and dismissive reactions came from the people Carr accused of over-selling their products to their customers—CEOs of information technology companies. A Debate With Nicholas Carr Sponsored By Infoconomy. Some IT pros, threatened by the thought of losing control, wanted to prove Carr wrong to their CEOs and maintain the status quo. More on the same page as Carr was analyst David Tapper, vice president of outsourcing and offshore services at research firm IDC, who says he fundamentally agreed with Carr's article. How Is Blackness Represented In Digital Domains? 11 thoughts on “ IT doesn’t matter, part 1 ” Simon Wardley January 3, 2007 at 2:20 pm. Moreover, even as the basic technologies improve, the commercial applications of these technologies have arguably thus far only scratched the surface.”. Another ingredient in the longevity prescription is to be in good company. Because it won't matter to the consumer, it will matter to the suppliers and the service providers," Tapper says. New Book! “It doesn’t matter” is an attempt to realize the essential freedom of determining the meaning of an event for oneself. "On the other hand, if you look at corporate spending, cloud is still a fairly small percentage of overall spending, even though it's growing quickly. Lesson #3: While sounding controversial, make sure you echo a very mainstream idea and attitude. Possibly the greatest rebuttal to “IT Doesn’t Matter,” (although it wasn’t presented as a reaction to Carr) was published by Andrew McAffee in 2004, as a … In his HBR article, "IT Doesn't Matter," Nicholas Carr has stirred up quite a bit of controversy around IT's role as strategic business differentiator. But again, Carr was in great company (see Lesson #3). He actually defined (albeit in a footnote) what he was talking about: “’Information technology’” is a fuzzy term. N 1968, a young Intel engineer named Ted Hoff found a way to put the cir- cuits necessary for computer process- ing onto a tiny piece of silicon. Previously, I held senior marketing and research management positions at, I'm Managing Partner at gPress, a marketing, publishing, research and education consultancy. But even if you limit the discussion to traditional companies and their traditional IT organizations, it is ridiculous to say there hasn’t been innovation in IT infrastructure over the last ten years. Carr’s audience was ready to hear that technology’s glory days were over (see Lesson #1), but his straight-forward delivery was surely an important additional ingredient in the article’s longevity prescription. I thought Carr was wrong and the other keynoter was absolutely right—only that Carr’s presentation was delivered in English and the pundit’s in pundit-speak, awash with made-up words and over-the-top pronouncements. "Our suspicion proved well-grounded: Nick was attacked as much for what he did not say as for what he said -- maybe more," said Stewart, who today is chief marketing and knowledge officer at Booz & Company. IT suppliers were the most upset, Carr recalls, since he essentially was telling corporate leaders to ignore vendor hype and to stop overspending on IT. Back when "IT Doesn't Matter" was published, the idea of utility-like computing was relatively new in the trenches of enterprise IT. (Read the full Q&A here). Summary IT doesn’t matter by Nicholas Carr In his article in the Harvard Business Review of 2003 Carr argues that IT has lost its strategic value. IT Doesn’t Matter . Nicholas Carr, Harvard Business Review, 2003. It deals with IT Doesn’t Matter, a polemic written by Nicholas Carr, then editor of the Harvard Business Review in which he argued that the days when IT offered strategic advantage are long since gone and that managers therefore should undertake a different approach to IT. "There were a couple of organizations that specifically started talking to me about virtualizing everything, automating everything, implementing chargebacks and things like that. On the other hand, IT pros have new challenges to address, such as cloud strategy, mobility and social media. Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. Although few would think first of this industry or region in a search for IT leaders, Inditex’s experience demonstrates that it is possible to masterfully select, adopt and leverage IT while spending very little on it.”, So much for Carr’s contention that the “core functions of IT… are becoming costs of doing business that must be paid by all but provide distinction to none.”. Why Should Leaders Stop Obsessing About Platforms And Ecosystems? Actually, don’t even bother with any examples to support your argument. "Nick Carr is a provocateur and author rather than a technologist, and I don't think he understood what IT does when it does it well.". Just two years later, in 2003, Harvard professor Nicholas Carr wrote his article “ IT Doesn’t Matter ” in the Harvard Business Review. But the reaction went way beyond what I expected," Carr says. ", [ Q&A: Nick Carr on 10th anniversary of 'IT Doesn't Matter', BLOG POST: IT Doesn't Matter: What every IT pro needs to know to survive in the cloud era -- Part 1 | Part 2 ], Carr advocated spending less on IT, both to reduce costs and to decrease the risk of buying soon-to-be obsolete equipment and applications. Nick Carr's article 'IT Doesn't Matter' was published in in Harvard Business Review in May 2003 and ignited an industry firestorm for its perceived dismissal of the strategic value of IT. Doesnt Matter, in its.A response to the Harvard Business Review article IT Doesnt Matter. Most of these comments don't reflect much understanding with what Carr actually says, but seem to be a response to their personal ox being gored. The jarring headline of Carr's May 2003 article, "IT Doesn't Matter," is what many people remember, and it tends to overshadow his more thought-provoking thesis: that companies have overestimated the strategic value of IT, which is becoming ubiquitous and therefore diminishing as a source of competitive differentiation. "We also suspected that it might be misinterpreted as being a Luddite's argument for typewriters rather than a nuanced argument that IT was strategically important not for itself but for what it enabled one to do, just as (using the analogy Nick used) electricity was more important for what people did with it than for the fact that it spawned a utilities industry.". Therefore the most important question in Carr's book, I think, is one he doesn't allow to be asked. Bernanke again: “Some would say that we are still in the early days of the IT revolution; after all, computing speeds and memory have increased many times over in the 30-plus years since the first personal computers came on the market, and fields like biotechnology are also advancing rapidly. This essay explains why the ideas presented by Nicholas Carr in his article are applicable in every corporation. All this hype masks the real benefits of IT where more and more smart people put it increasingly to good use in more parts of the world and in more areas of business, government, and leisure, innovating as they go along new information technologies and new IT applications. I'm Managing Partner at gPress, a marketing, publishing, research and education consultancy. Ann Bednarz covers IT careers, outsourcing and Internet culture for Network World. As Carr’s article says,businesses have This is a very broad definition of information technology and Carr was clear in his assertion that its innovative days were over. Possibly the greatest rebuttal to “IT Doesn’t Matter,” (although it wasn’t presented as a reaction to Carr) was published by Andrew McAffee in 2004, as a Harvard Business School case study and a Sloan Management Review article:  “…the company relies on an out-of-date operating system for its store terminals and has no full-time network in place across stores. ", Bernanke goes on to explain why he thinks the end-of-innovation camp is wrong: ”…innovation, almost by definition, involves ideas that no one has yet had, which means that forecasts of future technological change can be, and often are, wildly wrong. It wasn't shared on Facebook, it didn't trend on Twitter and it wasn't voted up on Reddit -- none of those sites existed at the time. 301 certified writers online. A safe prediction, I think, is that human innovation and creativity will continue; it is part of our very nature. nature of IT written by practitioners from three different points of view. But it’s not technology that matters. And as for IT-spurred industry transformations, most of the ones that are going to happen have likely already happened or are in the process of happening. How Do Employee Needs Vary From Generation To Generation? All the response doesn't imply a useful argument. It's traceable to the deep-seated ignorance of the article. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. Ann Bednarz covers IT careers, outsourcing and Internet culture for Network World. They all contributed to the widespread perception that while investing heavily in the new technologies of the network era was certainly expensive, it was nothing compared with the cost and risk of not doing so.”, But McAffee’s conclusion, based not on generalities but on a careful study of a company and its use of IT, was the opposite of Carr’s: “…an example of wise IT investment comes from an unlikely source: Inditex Group, a clothing manufacturer and retailer based in northwestern Spain and best known for its Zara stores. We will write a custom Critical Writing on “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page. Its contribution must be justified by strategy and incorporated by tactics. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterised the 19th century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down. "I think he got people to start to think about it, to say, 'Let's step back from what we do and ask: Where is this all going, folks?' “Provocative” and “controversial,” in the context of a widely-discussed article, usually mean that it reflects a prevailing mood, typically at the exact moment before it becomes “conventional wisdom”—it makes some important people (with a vested interest that’s being attacked) angry and defiant, helping to increase its prominence, but it also resonates with the great majority of the audience interested in the article’s topic, articulating and crystallizing for them their feelings and attitudes, be they positive or negative. In 2003 Nicolas Carr published the very controversial "IT Doesn't Matter" paper in the Harvard business review. No. His argument is based on the assumption that in the early days companies could get a strategic advantage, but that nowadays IT cannot give those advantages anymore. The main thrust of the article “IT doesn’t matter” by Nicholas Carr is the notion that IT (Information Technology) is no longer a means of competitive advantage but rather has become relegated to the status of a utility. Most recently, I was Senior Director, Thought Leadership Marketing at EMC, where I launched the Big Data conversation with the “How Much Information?” study (2000 with UC Berkeley) and the Digital Universe study (2007 with IDC). Copyright © 2013 IDG Communications, Inc. I think he needed to modify it a little bit, but he struck the right chords," Tapper says. But now he says his 2003 was at “the level” of infrastructure and as such did not include the “new things.” Similarly, as Joe Weinman reported on these pages, McKinsey’s Will Forrest makes the distinction between “old IT” and “new IT.” So the prediction that there will be no innovation in IT “has basically panned out” because IT has changed? Just as a consensus was forming about the value of IT, the Internet stock market bubble burst. Excellent! In addition to missing the IT-related innovation happening in 2003, Carr overlooked the many traditional businesses that were using IT in innovative ways without falling into the trap of “IT for strategic advantage.” Carr still ignore these companies today: “IT companies tried to sell the latest server model as the key to strategic advantage--you need to be on­­­­ the cutting edge of infrastructure or your business is going to be overwhelmed by competitors. How Can Tech Companies Become More Human Focused? Information technology has become a very important component in the success, efficiency and effectiveness of business. Carr's arguments were, again, conceptual at best and present using a very soft methodology.Critique of the Arguments of Carr's: IT Doesn't Matter, C. Madewell, 6 Critique of Argument 3The third set of arguments that Carr makes is that commoditization of information technologies cause information technology businesses to crumble (Carr, 2003, pp. Carr has been a very refreshing antidote to our addiction to technology, to the widespread belief that the latest technology is always revolutionary, and to the numerous pundits who proclaim how it is going to change our lives forever. Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf Nicholas carr it doesn t matter pdf DOWNLOAD! He also predicted the rise of utility-like computing: "The arrival of the Internet has accelerated the commoditization of IT by providing a perfect delivery channel for generic applications. It doesn’t protect the powerful.” At the same time, Biden argued that Trump had undermined both the free press, with his verbal attacks on journalists, and the independence of the Justice Department, with his insistence that the attorney general do his political bidding. It’s how it is used that becomes an advantage. Lesson #6: Make sure your topic is a “fuzzy term” which could be re-defined in the future. Carr's argument wasn't exactly that IT doesn't matter, but rather that it has become a commodity providing little competitive advantage. Where Is There Still Room For Growth When It Comes To Content Creation? Another prediction, just as safe, is that people will nevertheless continue to forecast the end of innovation.”. Proprietary technology gives an advantage while protected 3. Absolute certainty in how the future is going to unfold is an important ingredient in the longevity prescription. But Mann saw some IT leaders accept the implicit challenge and begin laying the groundwork for cloud computing because of Carr's article. And as for IT-spurred industry transformations, most of the ones that are going to happen have likely already happened or are in the process of happening. The paper, obviously, became ", I knew I was writing something that was provocative and that went against the grain of a lot of the rhetoric that was out there about information technology and business. We crave certainty because we need it, because we actually have no clue of what will happen the next minute, to say nothing about the next year or ten years. IT Doesn’t Matter response. At the very least, the article left a lasting impression. He examines the evolution of IT and argues that it follows a pattern very similar to that of earlier technologies like railroads and electricity. There are no exceptions," Tapper says. To everyone else, technology is just a tool to do their jobs, something that's taken for granted, according to Tapper. Electricity is a commodity, IT is not. Both groups were interested in trying to prove Nick Carr wrong, but for different reasons and in different ways. No company has specific advantage from using. "If Nick had just merely [been] a provocateur/bomb-thrower/iconoclast -- i.e., had he been wrong -- then the article would have been a 9 days' wonder, not something you'd like to write about on its 10th anniversary," Stewart said. At that level, the idea that the basic technology was going to be neutralized as a competitive differentiator has basically panned out.”. "It's still a bit of a raw nerve for a lot of people," Mann says. Advantage in early adoption phase 2 today ’ s Law is that human innovation and will. Be fundamentally different business World in a more advanced technological way I held marketing... 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