What's New?

• October 21: Some more detail on the final assignment presentation.
• October 14: Finalized the final case (Pfizer virtual CIO)
• October 14: Changed timing of class Oct. 20.
• October 9: Changed various aspects - literature, assignment - of lectures later in October.
• October 6: Corrected text for the assignment for October 13: It is an individual assignment.
• October 2: Moved IT & economics lecture to the 13th from the 6th. Changed the order of some of the latter classes.
• September 19: Changed the order of class 5 (Linpro) and 6 (Value shops).
• September 16: Changed from one assignment each class to "some classes".
• September 4: Changed to the Schibsted case for lecture 2.
• June 18: Timings for individual lectures entered.
• June 17, 2008: Inital page based on last year, archived old page.
• NOTE: If you are or plan to be a participant in this course, please read the opening memo to students.
• The right to make changes at any time is most explicitly reserved!!

Course overview

The intent of this course is to give the student an understanding of the role of information technology in organizations, the impact of the rapid technology evolution for business environments, and the challenge of managing the technology (and the organizational units charged with its introduction and support). The discussions will be within three main areas:

• Managing IT for competitive advantage: Understanding how IT can give the organization a competitive advantage, and how to sustain that advantage.
• Understanding the role of IT in organizations: This part of the course will analyze organizations in terms of the chains, shops, networks framework, trying to understand how value is created in each of these strategic configurations, and how IT supports this value creation.
• Managing the IT resource: Understanding the organizational challenges of IT management, the interface between IS and the business, governance models and organizational processes, systems development and delivery, outsourcing.

Administrivia

Students are presumed to have a working knowledge of personal information technology, as well as a reasonable understanding of the different types of information technology (mainframe computers, personal computers, data networks etc.) and applications (transaction systems, data bases, decision support systems, electronic mail and groupware) in a modern organization, such as would be expected from someone who has worked in an organization using these tools for some years.  If you as a student feel you lack this knowledge, please take a look at the literature below - some of the books are quite good beginners' guides to the technology and the vocabulary.

Literature
 The main book of the course is Pearlson, K. E. and C. S. Saunders (2006). Managing and using information systems: A strategic approach, Wiley. (hereafter referred to as P&S). This book manages to be both brief, strategically oriented, technically adept, yet written so that it does not go stale as fast as most other IT books. Quite the thing to keep on the bookshelf when the MBA program is over and you encounter real IT managment problems.

For any other book, well - try my favorite books page or book posts on my blog.

Class preparation
Each class will have at least one case, as well as some reading (articles and/or book chapters) associated with it. All material (except HBS cases) will be found in Blackboard unless a) it is handed out in class (normally, cases and some articles), or b) it is a recommended book, or c) the article is available on the web, in which case a link is provided from the course page. You are expected to prepare for each class by reading the assigned material, using the study questions to guide you if you wish.  For some classes, you are expected to answer one specific question, and delivering the assignment in Blackboard before 20:00 (8pm) the day before class. The answer to the assignment question should be short (no more than 200 words), I am looking for keywords, not filler. The assigned material, as well as the answers sent in by the students, will then be discussed in class.

Classroom discussion
This course is taught by the case method - so classroom discussion is the main interaction between teacher and students. It is crucial both for the students' understanding and the quality of the discussion that the students are intimately familiar with the contents of the case before the lecture begins. Although individual time required to analyze cases varies significantly, experience suggests that students should plan to spend at the very least two hours (more, if lacking in English language skills, business or computer experience) on reading and analyzing each case (exclusive of articles and other course reading), and prepare extensive notes of their analysis to guide them in their discussion. The cases will be accompanied by study questions, which provide guidance in analyzing the case. The articles or book chapters may also help in analysing a case, as well as discussions with your peers.

• Individual participation (50% of grade) will be based mainly on the individual student's contribution in the classroom discussion, with the weekly individual electronic hand-ins forming a (small) part. Participation will be graded individually.
• Two group papers will be submitted during the course.  The first paper counts for 20% of the total grade, the second for 30%.
• The first paper should be one of the following:
1. Pick one of the following cases: Dell, Glamox, Pacific Pride, and prepare a 7-12 page report in the form of a memorandum to the main protagonist or protagonists advising on what IS and managerial decisions will be key in the next two years (based on the timing and facts of the case, not the company as it is now) and what he or she should do about them.
2. Answer the following question: You are CEO of a mid-range manufacturing company (i.e. in the InformationWeek sample).  How much money should you spend on information technology, and why? (7-12 pages)
• The second assignment should be done by all groups before the last class: 
• Read the case Pfizer's Virtual CIO (HBS 9-305-018). You have been charged by the ITLT to write a short report analyzing issue 4 on their agenda, where it says "ITLT served as a template for how Pfizer organized IT Activities across business groups. With the addition of Pharmacia, and the resulting increase in company size and differences in IT processes and systems, it was not clear if the ITLT model for organizing IT would continue to be effective." Analyze the IT organization of Pfizer in terms of its ability to address the issues IT pose to the company, and give recommendations for how to change IT organization, if necessary. Deadline: Before class starts, Thursday Oct. 30.

Each paper is due before class on the day the case is to be taught (submitted in Blackboard and on paper to the teacher). A grade will be given within three days. Groups that are not satisfied with the grade of the first assignment have the option to write another (from the list) and pick the best one.

Detailed seminar plan

• Garvin, D. A. (2003). "Making the case: Professional education for the world of practice." Harvard Magazine 106(1): 56ff. History of the case method in teaching by an excellent case teacher.
• Espen Andersen (2003): Reading and analyzing technology-rich cases. Study note, Norwegian School of Management.
• Christensen, C. M. and M. E. Raynor (2003). "Why Hard-nosed Executives Should Care about Management Theory." Harvard Business Review September): 67-74. Wonderful article on how to recognize good theory and how knowledge is grown.
• Szpiro, D. A. and D. J. Neufeld (2000). Learning Information Systems with Cases.

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 1 and 3 in P&S (plus the introduction, if you haven't read it.)
• Sherman, Stratford P. (1984). Microsoft's drive to dominate software. Fortune, January 23, 82-90.
• 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.
• Case: Mrs. Field's Cookies (HBS 9-189-056) (Incidentally, here is a neat little article on what it was like to work in this company in 1990.)

• 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. 25 pages, no formulas, got Coase the Nobel Prize)
  

• 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.

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?

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Case: Schibsted (HBS 9-707-474)
• This collection of Google blog posts

• "More media, less news", The Economist, August 24, 2006 (In Blackboard).
  

• Neal Stephenson (1999): Cryptonomicon. Excellent novel about business startups, cryptography, computer networks, the second world war, and much much more. Just the thing to understand techies and technologies.
  

1. What is the ownership structure of Schibsted – and what are the implications of it for their strategic outlook?
2. Visit the web sites sesam.no/nyheter and google.no (and click on “Nyheter” in the top right area of the screen.) What are the implications for Schibsted of these types of services?
3. How does Google’s business model differ from Schibsted’s? (note for exhibit 29: Google owns youtube.com and blogger.com. Microsoft owns msn.com, live.com and msn.no. Yahoo owns yahoo.com and flickr.com. Schibsted, in addition to the sites marked, owns nettby.no)
4. Should Aamodt allow Sesam to crawl (collect information) from Finn.no?
5. Is the free-sheet business a sustainable market? Why hasn’t it been successful in Norway?
6. What implications do the last statement – about the cathedral or stock market approach – have for Schibsted’s future?

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 2 and 5 in P&S.
• Porter, M. E., & Millar, V. E. (1985). How information gives you competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review(July-August), 149-160.
• Fjeldstad, Ø. and E. Andersen (2003). "Casting off the chains: Value shops and value networks." European Business Forum (14): 47-53.
• Magretta, J. (1998). "The Power of Virtual Integration: An Interview with Dell Computer's Michael Dell." Harvard Business Review (March-April): 72-84.
• Case: Matching Dell (HBS 9-799-158).
• Friedman, Thomas (2005): "How a Dell Computer is built", excerpt from chapter 12 in The World is Flat.

• 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.)
• 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.
• Davenport, T. H. (1998). “Putting the Enterprise into the Enterprise System.” Harvard Business Review (July-August): 121-131.

1. Dell's Direct model is widely admired, and many companies have wanted to emulate it. What competitive advantages does the business model give compared to traditional retail distribution models?
2. Why isn't Dell's business model more widely used outside the personal computer business?
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?

• e-Business from within: The organizational transformation of Glamox (A)
• Venkatraman, N. (1994). IT-enabled Business Transformation: From Automation to Business Scope Redefinition. Sloan Management Review (Winter), 73-86.

1. What were the processes of ordering from Glamox before the redesign of the value chain? How did they change, and what effect did the changes have on the role of the salesperson?
2. What is a SPOC?  What are the responsibilities of the SPOC?  What technologies
   and information is required to run a SPOC?
3. What are the differences between the “standard” way of producing lamp fixtures,
   and the new, componentized process in terms of
   1.  lot size (how many units it is economically feasible to produce
   2.  reset time (how long time it takes from switching from one product to another)
   3.  design (where is design and product innovation applied)
   4.  management (what are the salient management parameters to consider)
   5.  long-term market position?
4. In terms of Venkatraman’s article, which stage is the company at? Are all the parts of the company at the same stage? Which parts are leading and which are lagging,and why?
5. At the end of the case, what should Christian Thommessen do?

Guest lecturer Trond Heier, CEO, Linpro AS

• Eric Raymond (1998): The Cathedral and the Bazaar, First Monday 3.3 (incidentally, a very interesting journal in its own right. Eric has evolved this article and others into a book, and continues to evolve it.)
• Greiner, L. E. (1972). "Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow." Harvard Business Review (July-August): 37-46.
• Chapter 12 from 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.

Value Shops - companies that solve problems on behalf of customers - exhibit their own peculiarities in value processes and IT systems - and require their own kind of IT management.

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 12 in P&S, including the McKinsey case study towards the end.
• Hansen, M., N. Nohria, et al. (1999). “What is your strategy for managing knowledge?” Harvard Business Review (March-April): 106-116.
• Nonaka, I. (1991). “The Knowledge-Creating Company.”  Harvard Business Review (November-December): 96-104.
• Kankanhalli, A., F. Tanudidjaja, et al. (2003). "The Role of IT in Successful Knowledge Management Initiatives." Communications of the ACM 46(9): 69-73.
• Carr, N. G. (2003). "IT Doesn't Matter." Harvard Business Review (May): 41-49.
• Various responses to Carr's article, HBR Online.

• 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 questions:

1. What purposes does information technology serve in a Value Shop organization?
2. What are the differences between McKinsey and Andersen Consulting in their use of information technology? Why?
3. How do information systems in a Value Chain differ from those in a Value Shop?
4. What obstacles do you think you will face when implementing knowledge system in a stockbroking company?  A hospital?  A law firm?

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Hopper, M. D. (1990). Rattling SABRE--New Ways to Compete on Information. Harvard Business Review (May-June), 118-125.
• 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.)
• 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.
• Here is a good newspaper article on the more recent airline situation: Flight into the red, St.Petersburg Times, 2003.
• Case: Pacific Pride Services, Inc. This is an old case - but think, what if they were a mobile phone company?

• 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.
• 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.
• 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 questions:

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

• The Concours Group (2004): Service-centric IT, Re.sults report SIT.

The economics of investing in and using information technology: One of the hardest problems of managing IT is deciding on how much to spend on IT and understanding what the economic effect of the investment is.  We will look at this topic both from the viewpoint of a single company and by examining data from many companies.

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 4 and 10 in P&S.
• Hitt, L., & Brynjolfsson, E. (1996). Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of Information Technology Value. MIS Quarterly, 20(2), 121-142.
• The InformationWEEK 500, InformationWEEK, September 1995. I suggest you try to analyze one particular industry, for instance Aerospace, 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. (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.
• Volkswagen of America: Managing IT Priorities (HBS ref. 9-606-003).

• Gerlach, J., B. Neumann, et al. (2002). "Determining the Cost of IT Services." Communications of the ACM 45(9): 61-67.
• 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.)
• 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 questions:

1. Why did white-collar productivity not increase as much as blue-collar productivity in the period 1985-95?
2. What are Hitt & Brynjolfsson's three measures of information technology profitability -- and their conclusions about them?
3. How do you justify spending money on upgrading desktop computers and increasing  Internet bandwidth?
4. What is your assessment of the new process for managing IT priorities at VWoA?
5. How should Uwe Matulovic respond to his fellow executives who are calling to ask him for special treatment outside the new priority management system?
6. What should he do about the unfunded Supply Flow project?
7. Who was Doug Engelbart?  What is "bootstrapping"?

The functional management of IT is tricky, involving both operational excellence, managing technology employees, managing customer expectations and dealing with a multitude of vendors and consultants. As with most management issues, we learn the most when we study things that don't work well....

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 9 in P&S.
• Earl, M. and D. F. Feeny (1994). “Is your CIO adding value?” Sloan Management Review (Spring): 11-20.
• Hagel, J. and J. S. Brown (2001). "Your Next IT Strategy." Harvard Business Review (October): 105-113.
• Amoribieta, I., K. Bhaumik, et al. (2001). "Programmers abroad: A primer on offshore software development." McKinsey Quarterly(2): 128-140.
  
• Auguste, B. G., Y. Hao, et al. (2003). "The other side of outsourcing." McKinsey Quarterly(1): 52-64.
  
• 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.
• DiRomualdo, A. and V. Gurbaxani (1998). "Strategic Intent for IT Outsourcing." Sloan Management Review 39(4): 67-80.
• This great article from Wired on various sides of outsourcing to India.
• Case: Hostile IS outsourcing: The story of ManuFact
• Case: Lean at Wipro Technologies, HBS 9-607-032
  

• Ross, J. W. (2003). Creating a Strategic IT Architecture Competency: Learning in Stages. CISR working paper 335. Cambridge, Massachusetts MIT.
• McFarlan, F. W.,& Nolan, R. L. (1995). How to Manage an IT Outsourcing Alliance. Sloan Management Review (Winter), 9-23. Managerially oriented article on outsourcing, explaining financials and the effect of Kodak.
• Lacity, M. C., & Hirschheim, R. (1993). The Information Systems Outsourcing Bandwagon. Sloan Management Review (Fall), 73-86. A slightly more skeptical look at outsourcing.
• Andersen, E. (2002). "Stamp Out Technology Virginity!" ACM Ubiquity 3(30).

Study questions (more to come):

1. Why has outsourcing become so popular?
2. What is XML? Why is it considered such an important technology by Hagel and Brown?
3. Who was Stephen Wozniak -- and what was it that was "insanely great?"

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapters 6 and 11 in P&S.
• "The Collapse of CONFIRM: What went wrong?", p. 534 in Laudon & Laudon: Management Information Systems, Fourth edition, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
• Oz, E. (1994). When Professional Standards are Lax: The CONFIRM Failure and its Lessons. Communications of the ACM, 37(10), 29-36.
• Hopper, M. D. (1990). Rattling SABRE--New Ways to Compete on Information. Harvard Business Review (May-June), 118-125. (already assigned for session 5/6, use in conjunction with Oz to evaluate CONFIRM.)

• Wheelwright, S. C. and K. B. Clark (1992). “Creating Project Plans to Focus Product Development.” Harvard Business Review (March-April): 2-14.
• 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...

• Why did the CONFIRM project fail? (Consider technical, organizational and strategic reasons.)
• Why is it hard to get people to work in IT departments?
• Who was Frederick Brooks?  What is a "man month" and what is its significance with respect to project management?

Enterprise search technology: Davor Sutija, FAST

Society, ethics and the individual in a digital world.

Read and be prepared to discuss:

• Chapter 8 in P&S.
• Turing, A. M. (1949). “Computer Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind 59(236): 433-460.
• Check out this link (turn on the sound first).
• While you are at it, look up search technology in Wikipedia. As well as "web services" and "XML".
• 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. (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.
• Revisit David's article on the QWERTY keyboard previous classes, including the rebuttal, and re-rebuttal.

• Stephenson, Neal (1999). In the beginning ... was the command line. (available for free from various places on the Internet, including Stephenson's web site.) A great "extended essay" on how technology, espcially information technology, has evolved and will evolve in the future. Explores the levels at which we understand technology and how we forge our relationship with it.
• 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.

Study questions:

1. What is a disruptive technology? Why do existing, dominant companies often fail to respond to it?
2. When was the (computer) mouse invented, and by whom?
3. 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?
7. What is the Turing test? Do you think we can create a machine that can pass it?  Would that be a thinking machine? 
8. Who is Bill Joy? What is Java?

• each group develops a paper and a presentation, hands the paper in and presents to the class
• you are supposed to act like a consulting company when you do it, presenting your solution to the challenges
• (but no need to put on suits and all that)
• Each presentation will get 5-7 minutes, followed by questions from the class (acting as the top management team of the case company), followed by an evaluation of the presentation by students and instructor

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