MIT Sloan Management Review

In a TED talk, Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh shows how a beam from a light bulb can be rigged up to transmit a high definition video stream. The grand vision: LED lights with added microchips will let us transmit thousands of data streams in parallel, enabling us to access the Internet on smartphones wherever there is a light source.

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

“Business users tend to ignore IT tools that require them to switch contexts, juggle multiple browser windows, and learn new collaboration habits . . . Eighty-three percent of business users continue to abuse email, ping-ponging document attachments back and forth, thus creating document chaos.â

Conventional wisdom has it that companies whose markets are being transformed by disruptive new technologies need to figure out how to switch to the new dominant technology. But two researchers argue that an alternative strategy –one that involves rethinking opportunities for the old technology — can sometimes make sense.

The Internet does a great job of facilitating knowledge sharing through tools such as wikis and forums. But these tools have their limitations.

The benefits of engaging customers in product development, product support and related activities are increasingly visible. Having the right technology-based system can enhance the customer experience and help companies improve both their innovation and customer relationship management capabilities.

The Genre Model can help in evaluating how a new communication technology may fit into your specific corporate environment.

Information technology remains a terrible bottleneck to growth in most companies, mainly because executives focus on the wrong remedy for their IT problems

Technology has always been about hope. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, businesses have embraced new technologies enthusiastically, and their optimism has been rewarded with improved processes, lower costs and reduced workforces.

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.

After decades of anticipation, the promise of automated decision-making systems is finally becoming a reality in a variety of industries.

Traditionally, a company’s links to its customers, suppliers and other external parties have been based upon either arm’s-length transactions or socially embedded ties. Electronic technologies have enabled a third and more flexible option, dubbed “virtually embedded ties.”

Organizations are increasingly able to gather and process information from a variety of new sources. But competitive advantage will still belong to those who know how to use it.

Most companies today are using precious little of the computing power available to them through the machines and software they already own. PCs, servers and mainframes all sit idle much of time, while the people who operate them are away from the office or the plant.

More and more companies are integrating their data with those of supply-chain partners, acquired divisions or vendors to whom they’ve outsourced their IT function.

A recent case study finds that enterprise-level software packages may ultimately drive improvement but may not reconcile operational disparities.

Rather than trying to apply an exhaustive IT implementation checklist, executives should focus on identifying the likely pitfalls for the specific project at hand.

Recent research indicates that managers at top-performing companies are able to identify the nature and array of initiatives they may need to implement, then determine the unique combination of IT service clusters necessary to create that agility.

The greatest benefits come from a tight fit between organizational processes and the enterprise application software.

Companies want people to shop online, but they have yet to ease many consumers’ fears about doing business through the Internet.