If we examine deeper, especially the article by Leslie Walker in the Washington Post, where she says that Carr may be premature “calling this a turning point for the industry” and that in some industries there is “still a strategic value left to be squeezed out of a clever implementation of IT” (Carr, 2007). Some industries can certainly see improvements out of technological advancement to increase competitive advantage. The Taxi service industry can get pinpoint GPS data to track the closest taxi to your called in location. Some companies are playing around with this technology and for those, that competitive advantage exists, but many more are still using the 2-way radio as a form of locating drivers. Technology can aid many industries to take their business one step higher, from 2-way radio to email to click-to-talk radios to other forms of communication technology.

In industries that are heavily complicated with technology, like the online industry, it is proven, as stated by Chad Dickerson in Info World, “higher levels of IT spending have no correlation to a company’s financial results” (2007). He says successful companies spend less on technology.

I started a printing company a couple years ago and I’ve spend lots of money on high-end programming to allow customers to place order online, be able to track shipments and be able to design their print products online. These improvements have allowed me to focus on areas of the business that are unrelated to taking orders and processing them. However, the improvement in technology has caught me up to competitors, but has done nothing to improve my comercial printing business. I haven’t attracted new customers or seen my revenue increase. I think that is where Carr is coming from. IT doesn’t matter in my case; I just need to stick to the fundamentals of marketing, attracting customers, offering great service and so on.

Carr says that technology “doesn't enable individual companies to distinguish themselves in a meaningful way from their competitors” (2007). That is realty, at least from my first hand experience.

“The religion has been challenged and that is a call to arms for many” (National Public Radio’s Marketplace) Really? The internet has helped our economy, lead to millions of people getting rich in the 90s when the stock market took off, but it’s now apart of our lives. We live and breathe technology these days, but companies are not competitively advanced because of it. As the radio clip stated, its “transformative, exciting, grows faster than anything” and we know that a next wave of technology will come about. Having technology is standard stuff (its part of your business), not having it, then you’re in trouble.

Carr argues that since technology become mundane and boring, the prevalent of IT has lead to become a commodity. Bob Evans in Info Week says, “ because IT has become widespread, then it must perforce become a commodity, as happened to other one-time breakthrough and industry-jarring innovations, such as steam engines and railroads, telephones and telegraphs, electric generators and internal-combustion engines” (2007).

What strikes me as interesting is that many industry leaders are arguing that technology matters, but technology itself is not what makes them great. Brad Boston, the CIO for Cisco says “Wal-Mart, Amazon, eBay, and other great companies didn't succeed because their information technology was better than others. Their vision was."

In general, I think this article really describes that our society should not worry about how technology is shapping strategies, but more on how technology is helping us achieve strategies.

References:

Carr, N. (2007). IT doesn’t matter. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on April 23, 2009 from:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/01/it_doesnt_matte.php

Dickerson, C. (2007). Fuhgeddabout IT. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on April 23, 2009 from:

http://www.infoworld.com/t/business/fuhgeddabout-it-043