Most business managers think they spend too much money on computing, so you'd expect them to enjoy reading a recent article in the Harvard Business Review headlined: Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore. Its explicit message is that IT no longer gives you a competitive advantage, because everybody has it, so invest your capital elsewhere.
The underlying idea of the article is that information technology has become a commodity, like electricity, and the implication is that basically, the IT revolution is over. In fact, the author, Nicholas Carr, even rolls out the tedious old cliche about software already providing more facilities than most people need, so firms could save money by using less capable systems.
It's like digging up an old drawing of some dude saying that papyrus production has now been perfected, so you can forget about writing. It's nonsense. It may well be true that, today, it's hard to get a competitive edge by installing or upgrading a word processor _ but that does not mean the same thing applies to the rest of IT. It would be illogical to deduce that web-based services, RFID (radio frequency identification), social software, biometrics, blade servers, computing grids and other trendy developments therefore didn't matter any more either. That's just wrong.
If fact, no sensible person believes that IT's progress has stopped, and neither does the Harvard Business Review, for which Carr is editor-at-large. We can be certain that the HBR will continue to publish excellent articles about how companies are using IT to gain a competitive advantage, with every single one of them contradicting the suggestion that IT Doesn't Matter Anymore.
None the less, we must admit that the IT industry is complicit in the sort of wishful thinking Carr implies, and the IT industry is far from alone in exploiting this approach, even though everyone knows it's rubbish. It's the notion that you can buy a solution, rather than a tool that can help you create a solution.
But sad to say, buying a new tennis racquet will not instantly make you better than Tim Henman, and buying a new server will not make your company a world-beater overnight. If you do the IT equivalent of fitness training, and devote years of hard work to improving your game, then a new racquet might help you succeed at some level, but you can't buy success just by buying a product.
IT is simply a tool that allows you to design and implement a solution - if you do it right. If you do it wrong, it allows you to design and implement a failure.
What the ads don't tell you is that IT actually works as an amplifier. If you have a winning product or strategy, IT enables you to exploit it faster, on a bigger scale, and over a wider area, or whatever. But if your strategy is a money-loser, using IT to automate the process will just make you go bust that much quicker.
Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore
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