Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-180) and index.

Technological transformations: the rise of a new business infrastructure -- Laying tracks: the nature and evolution of infrastructural technologies -- An almost perfect commodity: the fate of computer hardware and software -- Vanishing advantage: information technology's changing role in business -- The universal strategy solvent: the IT infrastructure's corrosive effect on traditional advantages -- Managing the money pit: new imperatives for IT investment and management -- A dream of wonderful machines: the reading, and misreading, of technological change.

"Every year, companies spend more than $2 trillion on computer and communications equipment and services. Underlying these enormous expenditures is one of modern business's most deeply held assumptions: that information technology is increasingly critical to competitive advantage and strategic success." "In this book, Nicholas G. Carr calls the common wisdom into question, contending that IT's strategic importance has actually dissipated as its core functions have become available and affordable to all. Expanding on the controversial Harvard Business Review article that provoked a storm a debate around the world, Does IT Matter? shows that IT - like earlier infrastructural technologies such as railroads and electric power - is steadily evolving from a profit-boosting proprietary resource to a simple cost of doing business." "Carr draws on convincing historical and contemporary examples to explain why innovations in hardware, software, and networking are rapidly replicated by competitors, neutralizing their strategic power to set one business apart from the pack. He shows why IT's emergence as a shared and standardized infrastructure is a natural and necessary process that may ultimately deliver huge economic and social benefits."--Jacket.

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