It Doesn't Matter Business Processes Do: A Critical Analysis of Nicholas Carr's I. T. Article in the Harvard Business Review

Book Description
You’ve no doubt seen or heard talk of "IT Doesn’t Matter" in the May 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review. It’s one of those rare pieces of Harvard-speak that will be heard around the world, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since HBR published Michael Hammer’s "Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate!" in 1990. As Bob Evans of Information Week reported, "Carr’s unshakeable belief [that IT is now a commodity] leads him to a conclusion that’s no doubt provocative, but also profoundly short sighted and dangerous." Has IT has reached the Winter of its life as an enabler of competitive advantage? Or is it Springtime, the season of growth for forward-thinking companies like GE, Dell, Wal-Mart and others determined to dominate their industries in the decade ahead? Read Smith & Fingar's critical analysis, and you decide. Smith & Fingar are authors of the landmark book, Business Process Management: The Third Wave. They posit that a new approach to business automation centered on business process management, instead of the data-centric world of the past fifty years that Carr describes, portends the greatest growth opportunity companies have ever seen.

About the Author
Howard Smith is Chief Technology Officer (Europe) of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and co-chair of the Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI.org). With more than 24 years in the IT industry, he is a sought after speaker and advisor. His work in predicting and shaping technology at the intersection with business led him to take an active role in the development and application of the third wave. He is currently researching the application of business process management to corporate sustainability, innovation and growth, for which he has global research and development responsibility at CSC. Peter Fingar is one of the industry's noted experts on Business Process Management (BPM). He has delivered keynotes on busines technology world wide and is author of the best-selling books, The Death of 'e' and the Birth of the Real New Economy and Enterprise E-Commerce. Over his 30-year career he has taught graduate and undergraduate computing studies and held management, technical and consulting positions with GTE Data Services, Saudi Aramco, EC Cubed, Noor Advanced Technologies, the Technical Resource Connection division of Perot Systems and IBM Global Services.


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Smith (chief technology officer, Computer Sciences Corp.) and consultant and educator Fingar are both heavily involved in the IT field, notably in the area of business process management. They have written a vigorous rebuttal to Nicholas Carr's provocative article about the commodification of the IT industry, which was published in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review and drew some notable rebuttals from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other sources. Instead of proclaiming the death of IT, the authors see a new age dawning of business process management (BPM). They dispute the idea that in many ways IT has become a utility and assert that business processes are taking over where data processing has left off. Though the entire debate is focused on the future of business technology, much of the argument may be moot to those who haven't read Carr's original article, which is referenced throughout. This is, however, a spirited commentary on a controversial subject and a strong defense of the importance of the IT industry. Purchase where there is interest.-Susan Hurst, Miami Univ. Lib., Oxford, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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