It Doesnt Matter Summary :: Nicholas Carr Article Summary

Electricity, the telephone, the locomote engine, the telegraph, the railroad and..IT? In his HBR article, IT Doesnt Matter, Nicholas Carr has stirred up quite a microprocessor chip of controersy around ITs role as strategical business differentiator. He examines the evolution of IT and argues that it follows a pattern very similar to that of earlier technologies worry railroads and electricity. At the beginning of their evolution, these technologies provided opportunities for competitive proceeds. However, as they become more and more visible(prenominal) as they become ubiquitous they transform into commodity inputs, and digest their strategic differentiation capabilities. From a strategic viewpoint, they essentially become invisible.Carr distinguishes amidst proprietary technologies and what he calls infrastructural technologies. Proprietary technologies can provide a strategic advantage as long as they remain restricted by physical limitations, intellectual proper ty rights, high costs or a lack of standards, but once those restrictions are lifted, the strategic advantage is lost. In contrast, infrastructural technologies provide far greater value when shared. Although an infrastructural technology might progress proprietary in the early stages of buildout, eventually the characteristics and economics of infrastructural technology exact that they will be broadly shared and will become a part of the broader business infrastructure. To illustrate his point, Carr uses the example of a proprietary railroad. It is practicable that a company might gain a competitive advantage by building lines only to their suppliers, but eventually this benefit would be trivial compared to the broader good realized by building a railway line network. The same is true for IT - no company today would gain a cost-effective competitive advantage by narrowing its focus and implementing an net income only between their suppliers to the exclusion of the rest of t he world. To further shore up his IT as commodity theory, Carr cites the fact that major technology vendors, such as Microsoft and IBM, are positioning themselves as IT utilities, companies that control the provision of business applications over the grid. Couple this IT-as-utility trend with the rapidly decreasing cost of processing power, info storage and transmission, and even the most cutting-edge IT capabilities quickly become available to all. Although IT may seem too diverse to be compared to commodities such as electricity and the railroads, Carr points out three specific characteristics that guarantee rapid commoditization IT is a transport mechanism IT is highly replicable and IT is subject to rapid price deflation.