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Comparing IT with previous broadly adopted technologies
Nicholas G. Carr is Harvard Business Review's editor-at-large and writes for several leading business magazines/newspapers. This article was published in the HBR's May 2003-issue.

As information technology's power and presence have expanded, companies have come to view it as a resource even more critical to their success. Since 1965, the capital expenditures of American companies on IT has risen from 5% to almost 50% (well over $2 trillion) each year. The attitude towards IT has also changed in this period, from proletarion tools to strategic tools. But Carr believes that IT is best seen as the latest in a series of broadly adopted technologies that have reshaped industry over the past two centuries. And although these technologies opened opportunities for forward-looking companies to gain real advantages, they become commodity inputs as their availability increases and their cost decreases. Building on comparisons that the impact of railways, the telephone, and electric power had on business, the author explains the coming implications for corporate IT management. He discusses the vanishing advantage of IT, the commodization of IT, and a more cautious approach toward IT in the years to come. Carr's advice for IT management is take a more defensive posture toward IT (spend less; follow, don't lead; and focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities).

Yes, a good article on the future of information technology. And although a good many people/companies will not like it, the author has a strong, somewhat negative, message. Based on the histories of previous technologies Carr believes that IT management should become boring, with a far more defensive approach toward IT. I also recommend Michael E. Porter' 2001-article 'Strategy and the Internet'. The article is written in simple business US-English.

"Focus on risks, not opportunities"
Nicholas Carr's article is at the centre of a firestorm. At a time when the IT industry seems to be in a bottomless freefall, the suggestion that companies should spend even less on IT investments is unwelcome to many ears.

"IT Doesn't Matter" certainly isn't the first paper to point out that the IT industry has been maturing. Previous analysts' reports have compared IT to such rustbelt industries as automotive manufacture, power generation and railroads. Carr is the first person, however, to have written a studied, coherent and complete explanation for how this new generation of software needs to be managed from a business person's point of view - and to do so in the prestigious Harvard Business Review, where he is Editor-At-Large.

The responses to this paper have been the predictable cheers from those who detest everything to do with IT, and the furious rebuttals from those who see IT as the primary, or only, hope for a resurgence of our economy. Nicholas Carr's thesis defends neither extreme. His carefully-phrased paper differentiates between strategic and essential, affordable and cheap, innovative and valuable. This enhanced edition of the article that first appeared in the HBR in May 2003 is well worth reading.