The Executive’s Guide to Information Technology, Second Edition

Foreword

I know what you’re thinking. What’s the guy who asked Does IT matter? doing writing the Foreword for the Executive’s Guide to Information Technology? If it doesn’t matter, why should executives care? It’s a good question, and I have what I think are two pretty good answers, one professional and one personal.

As I argue in my book Does IT Matter? I believe information technology has lost most of its power to provide a business with a meaningful competitive edge. Valuable new innovations in computer hardware and software are so rapidly copied today, either by competitors or by vendors, that an IT innovator rarely gets more than a fleeting advantage. And since the costs and risks of being a technological pioneer are so high, it hardly ever makes economic sense to be out in front. It’s better to be a smart follower, waiting for prices to come down and technology standards to emerge.

But if IT itself isn’t much of a differentiator anymore, IT management still is. About half the capital investments of the average company go into IT today, and ongoing IT costs usually represent somewhere between 3 and 10 percent of a company’s overall expenses. Big IT projects, moreover, continue to be afflicted by very high failure rates. The risks are as high as the costs. Improving the management of your IT assets and operations can thus translate into big and immediate cost reductions and profit gains. And because successful IT management is hard, an advantage here can last for years.

What John ...