Re: IT Doesn't Matter by Nicholas.G. Carr

The power and influence of IT has grown considerably, in the last few decades where half of a businesses' budget is spent on it. It can be given too much strategic value in a business though, and given that all competing businesses use IT, it can be easily replicated by a competitor. When a company has a competitive advantage in their IT systems it won't be long before your rivals copy it, diminishing your advantage.

IT is nothing more than a commodity. Making it valuable in the long term is a challenge. Advantages disappear quickly, one minute you are making money from proprietary software that cost a fortune to develop, next minute the technology is available to all for buttons. A business should aware of the pitfalls of over-capitalisation and the temporary nature of IT advantage, and strategies can be made to innovate before the advantage disappears.

With the knowledge that competitive advantage is fleeting, so businesses take heed of the following advice:

• don't waste money trying to get competitive advantage over a rival. You might only have it for a short time 
• wait for technology to get cheaper, this will also  give you time to assess what flaws the product has
• do not look for opportunities, rather optimise what you have and protect from risk

Software and hardware vendors want you to continually upgrade. It is their strategy to squeeze more money out of customers. A manager should not be afeard to resist wasteful upgrades. The top performing companies in the USA were very frugal with their IT spend.