MITSloan CIO Symposium Panel 2

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 |

Academic Keynote - the Future of IT

Moderator: Mr Gary Beach, publisher emeritus of CIO Magazine

Dr. Jeanne Ross (EA as Strategy, new book on IT Savvy coming)
Dr. Thomas Malone (predicted e-Commerce and sourcing in 1987)
Professor Erik Brynjolfsson

Questions and answers in comments.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Question: what's the next big thing in IT?

Dr. Malone - while we're focusing on cloud computing, the question we should be focusing on applications.
Something that could be called "Collective Intelligence". Citing Google and Wikipedia "ecosystems" with little or no centralized control and low cost of information acquisition.

AAB comment - patterns are still the same - it is all about integration of information and the value of the whole being much larger than the sum of its parts.

Moderator follow up: How's this different from knowledge management and business intelligence?

Knowledge management is only part of the problem, not the entire problem. The core question is how can people and computers be connected so that they act more intelligent than any of the parts.

New tribal connections through technology? This is happening now!

Dr. Ross - next big thing is not about technology, it's about digitized platform. What's new is that the recognition that business can be fundamentally transformed through technology. Habits are changing slowly - but they are changing. It means more discipline, understanding reuse - so that technology becomes an asset.

Case Study: UPS. CEO: "Happy surprises from IT" at the strategy sessions.

IT will start driving strategy in ways that organizations have not been comfortable in the past. Only 2% of 1500 surveyed actually have moved to this. Those 2% will move to collective intelligence, others need to get to digital platform first.

Moderator follow up - what is a non-digitized platform look like?

Dr. Ross - it's the current spaghetti mess and excuses as to why we can't get out of this mess.

Unknown said...

Moderator Question: to Dr. Ross - the subtitle of IT Savvy is quite interesting.

Dr. Ross - book is targeted toward non-IT executive audience. In most organizations, IT is a competitive liability. This book builds on the Operational Model choice and what it means to an organization.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Prof. Brynjolfsson - it's not surprising that most of current F500 organizations were founded during earlier recessions and depressions. It's part of the destructive business cycle.

New approach to doing business are emerging, with three attributes:

Experimentation
Measurement
Scale

Those that will emerge stronger from this downturn will leverage those three concepts in an integrated way.

Unknown said...

Dr. Ross - before a company can take advantage of new platform, they need to clean up the mess!