This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Investments in certain technologies do confer a competitive edge-one that has to be constantly renewed, as rivals don't merely match your moves but use technology to develop more potent ones and leapfrog over you. That's the conclusion of a comprehensive analysis that Harvard Business School professor McAfee and MIT professor Brynjolfsson conducted of all publicly traded U.S. companies in all industries over the past few decades. They found a clear correlation between levels of IT spending and a new competitive dynamic: Since the mid-1990s, when the rate of spending on IT began to rise sharply, the spread between the leaders and laggards in an industry has widened. There are more winner-take-all markets. But the increased concentration has ramped up, rather than dampened, churn among the remaining players. And these dynamics are greatest in those industries that are more IT intensive. This pattern is already familiar to the makers of digital products, but it has now spread to traditional industries, the authors contend, not because more products are becoming digital but because more processes are. Enterprise software like ERP and CRM systems, coupled with cheap networks, is allowing companies to replicate their unique business processes quickly, widely, and faithfully, in the same way that a digital photo can be endlessly reproduced. In this new environment, top managers must pay careful attention to which processes to make consistent and which to vary locally. And while standardizing some ways of working, they must also encourage employees to come up with creative process improvements to outdo competitors' innovations. Competing at such high speeds isn't easy, and not everyone will be able to keep up-but the companies that do may realize vastly improved business processes as well as higher market share and increased market value.

【書誌情報】

ページ数：16ページ

サイズ：A4

商品番号：HBSP-R0807J

発行日：2008/7/1

登録日：2012/3/28