• Garvin, D. A. (2003). "Making the case: Professional education for the world of practice." Harvard Magazine 106(1): 56ff..
  

Study questions:
1. What are Malone & Rockart's key arguments? To what extent were they right? Wrong?
2. What role does information technology play at Mrs. Fields?
3. What roles and responsibilities do the managers (i.e., Debbie Fields, the controllers, the line managers, and the store managers) have?
4. Would you like to be a store manager for Mrs. Fields? Why? Why not?
5. What was computing technology like when Leavitt & Whisler wrote their article? What technological and organizational developments did they foresee and which did they miss?
6. Which parts of Microsoft's strategy worked -- and which didn't? 

Assignment to be mailed in to Espen:
(remember to put "GRA8254-1 Ada Lovelace" in the subject line (assuming your name is Ada Lovelace, otherwise put your own name):
Write 10 lines on my previous experience of using or managing IT in organizations and 10 lines on what I expect to get out of this course.

• Sherman, Stratford P. (1984). Microsoft's drive to dominate software. Fortune, January 23, 82-90.  (In Blackboard)
  
• Malone, T. W., & Rockart, J. F. (1991). Computers, Networks and the Corporation. Scientific American (September), 128-136.
  
• Leavitt, H. J., & Whisler, T. L. (1958). Management in the 1980's. Harvard Business Review (November-December), 41-49. (In Blackboard).
  
• Case: Mrs. Field's Cookies  (HBS 9-189-056)
• Fjeldstad, Ø. and E. Andersen (2003). "Casting off the chains: Value shops and value networks." European Business Forum (14): 47-53.
  

• Coase, R. H. (1937). “The Nature of the Firm.” Economica 4: 386-405. (Classic on the concept of transaction costs and the theory of why firms exist and evolve.) In Blackboard.
  
• Stabell, C. B. and Ø. D. Fjeldstad (1998). “Configuring Value for Competitive Advantage: On Chains, Shops and Networks.” Strategic Management Journal 19: 413-437. (This is the more academic article forming the basis of the "Casting off the chains" article above.)

• Cringely, R. X. (1992). Accidental Empires: How the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition, and still can't get a date. Harmonsworth, Middlesex, England, Penguin Books. Fun, and very informative, about the evolution of the microcomputer industry.

Study question to be mailed in to Espen: (remember to put "GRA8254-2 Charles Babbage" in the subject line (assuming your name is Charles Babbage, otherwise put your own name))
1. Why is Cisco implementing an ERP system?  What does this system do?

Other study questions:
2.  What is the role of information technology at Dell Computer?  What competitive advantages does the Dell Direct model give compared to traditional retail distribution models?
3. What technology is typically used at each of Venkatraman's five stages? How has companies' ability to progress up these stages changed with the technology?
4. According to Porter & Millar, what can IT do for the competitive power of a value chain? 
5. Porter and Millar's article is 18 years old--what parts are it still applicable, what doesn't work anymore?

• Porter, M. E., & Millar, V. E. (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review(July-August), 149-160. (In Blackboard).
  
• Venkatraman, N. (1994). IT-enabled Business Transformation: From Automation to Business Scope Redefinition. Sloan Management Review (Winter), 73-86. (In Blackboard).
  
• Davenport, T. H. (1998). “Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System.” Harvard Business Review (July-August): 121-131. (In Blackboard).
  
• Case: Matching Dell (HBS 9-799-158).
• Case(will change): Cisco Systems (HBS 9-398-127) and Cisco Systems: Implementing ERP (HBS 9-699-022)

• Clark, K. B. and T. Fujimoto (1991). Product Development Performance - Strategy, Organization, and  Management in the World Auto Industry. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press. Large study of product and process development in the global auto industry.  Food for thought, many good concepts of organization and process.
  
• Utterback, J. M. (1994). Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.  Technology innovation and how it works.
• Christensen, C. M. (1997). The Innovator's Dilemma: Why New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.  Seminal work on the interactions between technology innovation and market dominance.
• Iansiti, M. (1998). Technology Integration: Making Critical Choices in a Dynamic World. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.  Study of project performance and technology conceptualization.

Study question to be mailed in to Espen (remember to put "GRA8254-3 John von Neumann" in the subject line (assuming your name is John von Neumann, otherwise put your own name)):
1. What benefits has American Airlines derived from its SABRE computerized reservations system from the 1950's to the 1990's?

Other study questions:
2. What are the economic characteristics of an airline?
3. What are the similarities, in terms of the competitive dynamics and IT use, between the telecommunications industry, airlines, and banks?
4. (this one is tricky) How valuable are Pacific Pride's information systems?
5. Who was John von Neumann?  What is the "von Neumann principle"?

• Hopper, M. D. (1990). Rattling SABRE--New Ways to Compete on Information. Harvard Business Review (May-June), 118-125.  (In Blackboard).
  
• Copeland, D. G., & McKenney, J. L. (1988). Airline Reservations Systems: Lessons from History. MIS Quarterly(September), 353-370. (We will talk about the competitive benefits of SABRE, as outlined here.) (In Blackboard)
  
• Davis, Paul (1994) Airline Ties Profitability Yield to Management SIAM News, Vol. 27, No. 5 (if the link is unreliable, try the PDF version in Blackboard.)
• Hormer, Peter (2000): The SABRE Story: The making of OR magic at AMR, OR/MS Today.
  
• Case: Pacific Pride Services, Inc.

• Smith, B. C., J. F. Leimkuhler, et al. (1992). "Yield Management at American Airlines." Interfaces 22(1): 8-31.  Excellent article on how yield management works - and the impact it had on American Airlines. (In Blackboard.)
• Andersen, E. and Ø. Fjeldstad (2003). "Understanding inter-firm relations in mediation industries with special reference to the Nordic Mobile Communication Industry." Industrial Marketing Management 32|: 397-408. (In Blackboard)
• McKenney, J. L. (1995). Waves of Change: Business Evolution through Information Technology. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.  The "big cases" of IT as competitive weapon (Bank of America, American Airlines, Frito-Lay, USAA and American Hospital Supply).
• Petzinger, T. (1996). Hard Landing. New York, Times Business Books.  The play-by-play of the US (and trans-Atlantic) airline industry since it was deregulated in 1980.  Great fun, gunslingers at OK Corral style.
  

• Gladwell, M. (2000). The Tipping Point. London, Abacus.  A lighthearted book on how fashions and epidemics get started and spread - and with lots of examples that help you understand network economics without using economics or (too many) sociology terms.
  

Study question to be mailed in to Espen:
1. What are Andersen Consulting's main issues in implementing knowledge management systems?
(remember to put "GRA8254-4 Grace Murray Hopper" in the subject line (assuming your name is Grace Murray Hopper, otherwise put your own name))

Other study questions:
2. What purposes does information technology serve in a Value Shop organization?
3. What are the differences between McKinsey and Andersen Consulting in their use of information technology?  Why?
4. How do information systems in a Value Chain differ from those in a Value Shop?
5. What obstacles do you think you will face when implementing knowledge system in a stockbroking company?  A hospital?  A law firm?
6. Who was Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper? How long is a nanosecond?

• Hansen, M., N. Nohria, et al. (1999). “What is your strategy for managing knowledge?” Harvard Business Review (March-April): 106-116. (In Blackboard).
  
• Nonaka, I. (1991). “The Knowledge-Creating Company.”  Harvard Business Review (November-December): 96-104. (In Blackboard).
  
• Kankanhalli, A., F. Tanudidjaja, et al. (2003). "The Role of IT in Successful Knowledge Management Initiatives." Communications of the ACM 46(9): 69-73. (In Blackboard).
  
• Andersen, E.: From information to knowledge - stop missing the links.
• Case: Knowledge Management at Andersen Consulting (HBS 9-499-032)
• Case: Knowledge Management at McKinsey (HBS 9-396-357)
• Carr, N. G. (2003). "IT Doesn't Matter." Harvard Business Review(May): 41-49. (In Blackboard, along with the ensuing debate about the article.)

• Nonaka, I. and H. Takeuchi (1995). The Knowledge-Creating Company. New York, Oxford University Press.  Classic on Knowledge Management.  One of the few business books where reading the HBS article is not enough.....
• Eccles, R. G. and D. B. Crane (1988). Doing Deals: Investment Banks at Work. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.  Great case study of investment banks -- and quite a lot about the marketing and pulling together of a problems solving capability.
• Davenport, T. H. and L. Prusak (1997). Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press.

• Caves, R. E. (2000). Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.  Excellent history of contracting and art: Lays out the peculiar reward and work mechanisms for writers, actors, painters, movie people, musicians as a consequence of the economic properties of creative products and their consumption.  Good economic history of the movie, music and theatre industries, as well.

Study question to be mailed in to Espen:
1. Imagine you are a CEO worrying about whether you are spending too much or not enough on information technology. How would the InformationWEEK 500 study help you? For help with the analysis, here's an Excel worksheet with the numbers. Use Shift-click to download the file to your own computer, then analyze it there using Excel or another spreadsheet.  (remember to put "GRA8254-5 Doug Engelbart" in the subject line (assuming your name is Doug Engelbart, otherwise put your own name))

Other study questions:
2. Why did white-collar productivity not increase as much as blue-collar productivity in the period 1985-95?
3. What are Hitt & Brynjolfsson's three measures of information technology profitability -- and their conclusions about them?
4. How do you justify spending money on upgrading desktop computers and Internet bandwidth?
5. Who was Doug Engelbart?  What is "bootstrapping"?
 

• Hitt, L., & Brynjolfsson, E. (1996). Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of Information Technology Value. MIS Quarterly, 20(2), 121-142. (In Blackboard).
  
• Carr, N. G. (2003). "IT Doesn't Matter." Harvard Business Review (May): 41-49. (including the correspondence from various people afterwards (in Blackboard).
  
• The InformationWEEK 500, InformationWEEK, September 1995. I suggest you try to analyze one particular industry, for instance Aerospace (for which the article is enclosed), Banking or Telecommunications, and then look at the bigger chart (or spreadsheet) to compare across industries.
• David, P. A. (1985). Clio and the Economics of QWERTY. American Economic Review, 75 (May-June), 332-337. (In Blackboard). (For an alternative view on this, check out Liebowitz, S. and S. Margolis (1990). "The Fable of the Keys." The Journal of Law and Economics (April) as well as this page on the fable of the fable.
• Case: Statoil: The IT Step (will be handed out in class)
• Case: The missing Gigabyte

• Gerlach, J., B. Neumann, et al. (2002). "Determining the Cost of IT Services." Communications of the ACM 45(9): 61-67. (in Blackboard.)
  
• Shapiro, C. and H.R. Varian (1999): Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.  (Excellent book on the economics of information and software, check out their web site. The book will be used on the 3rd semester course on Electronic Strategic Business Development.)
• Zuboff, S. (1988). In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. New York, Basic Books.  Sophisticated, if long, discussion of the effects of information technology on work and power in traditional organizations.  Antidote to most e-books, coined the term "informate" (as opposed to "automate.")

Study question to be mailed in to Espen:
1. Why did the CONFIRM project fail? (Consider technical, organizational and strategic reasons) (remember to put "GRA8254-6 Frederick Brooks" in the subject line (assuming your name is Frederick Brooks, otherwise put your own name))

Study questions:
2. According to Venkatraman, how has the role of IT departments changed over the years?
3. Why is it hard to get people to work in IT departments?
4. Pawson & al uses the term "expressive"? How is it different from "user friendly"?
5. Who was Frederick Brooks?  What is a "man month" and what is its significance with respect to project management?

• "The Collapse of CONFIRM: What went wrong?", p. 534 in Laudon & Laudon: Management Information Systems, Fourth edition, Prentice-Hall, 1996 (In Blackboard).
  
• Oz, E. (1994). When Professional Standards are Lax: The CONFIRM Failure and its Lessons. Communications of the ACM, 37(10), 29-36. (In Blackboard).
• Hopper, M. D. (1990). Rattling SABRE--New Ways to Compete on Information. Harvard Business Review (May-June), 118-125. (already assigned for session 2, use in conjunction with Oz to evaluate CONFIRM.)
• Weill, P. and R. Woodham (2002). Don ’t Just Lead, Govern: Implementing Effective IT Governance. Cambridge, Massachusetts, MIT Center for Information Systems Research. (In Blackboard).
  

• N. Venkatraman (1997) Beyond Outsourcing: Managing IT Resources as Value Centers, Sloan Management Review, Spring, pp. 51-64 (In Blackboard).
• Wheelwright, S. C. and K. B. Clark (1992). “Creating Project Plans to Focus Product Development.” Harvard Business Review (March-April): 2-14. (In Blackboard)
• Rich, B. R. and L. Janos (1994). Skunk Works. New York: Little, Brown.  (The history of Lockheed Martin's "skunk works," a highly innovative - and colorful - group of engineers who developed the U2 spy plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, and Stealth technology.)
• Brand, Stewart (1995). How Buildings Learn. New York, Penguin Books.  (Great book on what makes some buildings great for living in--rather than just looking at.  A technology book -- about houses)
• Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York, Basic Books. Fun on user-centered design -- and why door-handles with words on them are signs of design failure...

Study question to be mailed in to Espen:
1. Who is responsible for the Manufact situation? Should John Smith take the offer from Jim Lawler? If he takes the offer, what conditions should he set? (remember to put "GRA8254-7 Stephen Wozniak" in the subject line (assuming your name is Stephen Wozniak, otherwise put your own name))

Study questions:
2. What are the main differences between McFarlan & Nolan's view of what outsourcing is and Lacity & Hirschheim's? Why are their views different, and how do the differences influence their conclusions?
3. Why has outsourcing become so popular?
4. What is "human-centered information management", and what organizational mechanisms can we use to get it?
5. Who was Stephen Wozniak -- and what was it that was "insanely great?"

• McFarlan, F. W., & Nolan, R. L. (1995). How to Manage an IT Outsourcing Alliance. Sloan Management Review (Winter), 9-23. (In Blackboard)
  
• Earl, M. and D. F. Feeny (1994). “Is your CIO adding value?” Sloan Management Review (Spring): 11-20. (In Blackboard)
  
• Davenport, T. H. (1994). “Saving IT's Soul: Human-Centered Information Management.” Harvard Business Review (March-April): 119-131. (In Blackboard.)
  
• Dignan, L. (2003). "Leaping, then looking." Baseline (September): 17-29.  Short discussion of the economic and competitive implications "offshoring" and the gradual emergence of a global job market for technology workers. (In Blackboard)
  
• Andersen, E. (2002). "Stamp Out Technology Virginity!" ACM Ubiquity 3(30).
  
• Case: Hostile IS outsourcing: The story of ManuFact
• Case: Surething: The disempowered CIO

• Lacity, M. C., & Hirschheim, R. (1993). The Information Systems Outsourcing Bandwagon. Sloan Management Review (Fall), 73-86. (In Blackboard)
  

Study question to be mailed in to Espen:
1. What is RFID?  Why did Gillette and Walmart decide to start experimenting with the technology?  Why did they stop? (remember to put "GRA8254-8 Bill Joy" in the subject line (assuming your name is Bill Joy, otherwise put your own name))

Study questions:
2. What is a disruptive technology?  Why do existing, dominant companies often fail to respond to it?
3. When was the mouse invented, and by whom? How about the graphical user interface (GUI) with windows (sometimes called WIMP interface)? The laser printer?
4. How does thinking about privacy differ between Europe and the United States?
5. Within our lifetimes, computers that are smarter than people will not only be possible, but common.  Agree or diagree?  Why?
6. Check out www.archive.org.  What does the site do?  Is this necessary?
6. What is the Turing test? Do you think we can create a machine that can pass it?  Would that be a thinking machine? 
7. Who is Bill Joy? What is Java?

• Turing, A. M. (1949). “Computer Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind 59(236): 433-460.
  
• Dyson, E. (1998). “Privacy Protection: Time to think and act locally and globally.” Release 1.0 (4).
• Andersen, E. (2002). "Attendre le Suitcase..." ACM Ubiquity 3(7).
  
• Andersen, E. (2003). "Genesis of an anthill: Wireless technology and self-organizing systems." Ubiquity 3(49).
  
• Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. C. (1995). Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Waves. Harvard Business Review (January-February), 43-53. (In Blackboard. For more details on the disk drive industry, Chapter 1 of The Innovator's Dilemma can be found here).
• Christensen, C. M., M. Raynor, et al. (2001). "Skate to Where the Money Will Be." Harvard Business Review(November): 73-81. (In Blackboard)
  
• Revisit David's article on the QWERTY keyboard from class 5, including the rebuttal, and re-rebuttal.

• Wired Magazine: The Curse of Xanadu (this is a long article, interesting, but not for the faint-hearted.  The interesting questions is, given that the WWW was invented as early as this, why was not Ted Nelson successful?)
  
• Hofstadter, D. M. (1979). Gödel, Esher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. New York, Vintage Books.  (Wonderful book on computers, music, art, mathematics and most of all--self-referential systems.)
• Bolter, J. D. (1984). Turings Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age. Old Woking, Surrey, UK, Unwin Brothers Ltd.  (Man always seen himself in terms of the technology of the times--and now the technology is the computer)
• Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston, MA, Little, Brown & Co.  (What is consciousness--and where in the brain does it reside?)
• Lessig, L. (2001). The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. New York, Random House.  Brilliantly written on the connection between copyright and innovation - and the need to have "commons" where innovation can take place.
• Garfinkel, S. L. (2000). Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century. Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.  How technology intrudes -- and what you can do about it (more of the former than the latter.)
• Hafner, K. and M. Lyon (1996). Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York, Simon & Schuster.  Good history of the Internet.
• Hafner, K. and J. Markoff (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York, Simon & Schuster.  Good book on computer sabotage and why people do it.

Each group prepares a paper and hands it in at beginning of class (see assignment described above).

Each group will bring a three-slide presentation to class, summarizing the group's answer to the questions in the paper. The presentation is to be prepared as if you were a consulting team charged with supporting the case protagonist.

• Timberjack Parts: Packaged Software Selection Project, Harvard Business School case no. 398-085, by Romanow, Keil and McFarlan.