MIT Sloan Management Review

The relentless advance of information technology today means that a key task of the business manager now is to cope with one wave of IT innovations after another. At any given time, an executive is likely to feel more or less inundated by a current wave, unsure of what all the commotion is about, unable to avoid the topic in conversation and yet suspicious that the latest “killer app” may be mostly hype. Is there a better way?

The capabilities of computers are now improving so quickly that concepts can move from the realm of science fiction into everyday life in just a few years, rather than a lifetime. Rapid advances in information technology — computer hardware, software and networks — are yielding applications that can do anything from answering game show questions to driving cars. But to gain true leverage from these ever-improving technologies, companies need new processes and business models.

Business analytics projects are often characterized by uncertain or changing requirements — and a high implementation risk. So it takes a special breed of project manager to execute and deliver them.

Virtual worlds have been slow to catch on in businesses — but employees familiar with the technology may help.

Companies have been trained to think about data all wrong, say Attivio’s Ali Riaz and Sid Probstein. “Analytics don’t have to be based on super-precise data,” they say. “The report doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to capture the behavior, not the totality of it.”

How the smartest organizations are embedding analytics to transform information into insight and then action. Findings and recommendations from the first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Global Executive study.

On average, investments in information technology are associated with greater productivity for companies -- but why do some companies get greater productivity benefits from IT than others? That was one of the questions MIT Sloan Professor Erik Brynjolfsson addressed at a presentation at the MIT Center for Digital Business today.�

An increasing number of U.S. companies are outsourcing information technology and professional service jobs to offshore locations to reduce costs and take advantage of global skills.

Despite its potential, few managers have begun even to scratch the surface of information about intangibles and the opportunity it offers.

The paradigm of brand is worn out. Marketing and strategy must now be about shaping the competitive ecosystem.

Do we finally have the right technologies for knowledge work? Wikis, blogs, group-messaging software and the like can make a corporate intranet into a constantly changing structure built by distributed, autonomous peers — a collaborative platform that reflects the way work really gets done.

He probably wouldn’t, but Robert Taylor could lay claim to being the best-ever manager of innovation. In the late 1960s, Taylor headed the office at the Advanced Research Projects Agency that oversaw implementation of the first four nodes of the Internet.

New information technologies, such as broadband networks, mobile communications and the Internet, have well-known, but often unrealized, potential to transform businesses and industries. The key to success is knowing how and when to apply the technologies. Companies should look at 10 specific drivers to help determine their best strategy.

The authors track a strategic decision in a Fortune 500 corporation, identify political obstacles that overshadowed the process, and highlight turning points in the strategy’s direction. The unfolding Techno story provides a close look at the implications for organizing team-based processes and managing the politics of technological change.

Electronic markets may soon affect the evolution of the national information infrastructure (NII), or in formation superhighway, as well as the emerging global infrastructure. As the NII is connected to consumers’ homes, market activity will rapidly expand.