A new front has opened up in the battle of using IT for business competitiveness. The battle that has since Nicholas Carr, wrote "Does IT Matter?" in 2004.
Read this article to see where the battle lines are drawn today.
I'm a big fan of the work of Andrew McAfee, and hugely enjoyed his talk at one of the last BEA conferences held before the Oracle acquisition.
I'm of the view that IT does matter, but not in and of itself. IT only matters in how it is used. It matters in how it can provide, support and maintain competitive advantage. It's just one tool that a business can use to improve, but the change in pace of technology and the speed of adoption of today's latest advances mark it out as an important one.
In Andrews words, "Are the players of the game of business interested in finding out how the rules theya??re accustomed to have changed, and how to put themselves on the high side of the large spread thata??s resulted?"
-sean
