Does IT matter?

The distinction between IT-as-innovation and IT-as-enabler-of-process-innovations is critically important. It's the distinction between a one-time shock to a system, and a system in which shocks are much more common. If the deepest impact of the mid-'90s innovations in corporate IT is to increase the pace and scope of process innovation, then simply succeeding with a couple of system installations is insufficient, because some competitors won't stop using IT to change existing processes or to invent and deploy new ones. When this happens, and when the process innovations are competitively valuable ones, rivals will have no choice except to keep up with the new higher pace of innovation. Only time will tell which of the two theories is correct--whether IT-consuming industries experienced a one-time shock in the mid 1990s, or whether they're now experiencing more frequent and profound process shocks because of IT.

Read more about whether IT matters:
- read this blog entry at the Harvard Business School website