JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Vol. 17, No. 2

Fall 2003
pp. 133137

Book Reviews
Cheryl L. Dunn, Editor
Editors Note: Welcome to the newest development within JISthe book review section. What
can you expect to see here? Let me start by telling you what not to expect. Dont expect to see AIS
textbook reviews. Dont expect to see traditional book reviews that outline what someone liked
and disliked about a book, such as those you can find at online booksellers websites. Dont expect
that the reviewed books will have been published recently; our requirement is only that the books be
relevant today. What you can expect in this section is a venue for practitioners and academic
scholars in information systems to introduce JIS readers to books that have influenced their own
work.
For this first edition, I requested book reviews from Mr. Wayne Harding, an accounting infor-
mation systems practitioner, and Professor Daniel OLeary, an accounting information systems
scholar. Both of these individuals chose fascinating books. Mr. Harding reviews Good to Great, a
book that has influenced his strategy and decision making. This book has lessons for all of us as
individuals and as a profession, as we consider our goals and how best to reach them. What will it
take for us to go from good to great, or to go from great to greater? Professor OLeary reviews
Mirror Worlds, a book that describes a recent technological development that has the potential for
transforming the way enterprises manage their operations. Although published in 1992, Professor
OLeary demonstrates its relevance by including recent evidence of the benefits realized through
their use of mirror worlds technology. He also provides insights as to how academic JIS readers can
apply knowledge of this emerging technology in teaching and research. Thank you to both of these
renowned individuals for contributing to the inaugural JIS book review section!

JIM COLLINS, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Dont (New
York, NY: Harper Business, 2001, ISBN: 0066620996, 320 pages, $27.50).
What separates the outstanding from the average? Many times, the small things are what count;
like getting out of the box the fastest in a sprint, or knowing where the puck will be. Usually, it is
the small things that count in sports, but in business, it is a well-thought-out plan and deliberate
actions.
What actions and plans make a company great? How can these principles be applied to the IT
field? These questions are answered by Jim Collins book, Good to Great, which is the sequel to his
book, Built to Last. Both books are based not on theory but on in-depth research and analysis. This
provides a high believability score to his work. Built to Last dealt with companies that were already
great. These companies did not have to go from being mediocre to being the best. Surely there are
lessons to learn from companies that hit an inflection point and break away from their peer group
going from average or good on to achieve greatness. Perhaps these lessons are uniform, and indeed,
Collins research shows this to be true.
Good to Great companies have a few things in common. First, they have a leader who builds a
team through personal humility and professional will. The book reviews the different hierarchical
levels of an executive, from Level 1 (Highly Capable Individual) to Level 5 (where a leader builds
enduring greatness). This greatness is achieved with the right blend of personal humility and profes-
sional determination.

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Second, Good to Great companies build a senior team that has the same qualities as their
leaders. These leaders and core team members check their egos at the door. No organization is
without challenges, but under the right Good to Great leadership, a team is gathered first, and then
the direction the company will take is decided. Many times this involves facing the brutal facts of a
situation. This is often referred to as the Stockdale Paradox, named after Admiral Jim Stockdale,
who was the highest-ranking U.S. military officer at the famous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam
War. He did not sugar coat the situation his fellow prisoners faced, yet he gave them hope in the
midst of hardship. Confront the facts of the situation and then commit to success given these facts.
Another common quality of Good to Great companies is the accurate self-assessment of what
the company meansits raison dtre (reason for life). The book refers to this as the hedgehog
concept. The hedgehog is a less-than-beautiful, slow-moving animal, yet it knows where it is going
and does not often change direction. The Good to Great direction is made up of the intersection of
three circles:
1. What you can be the best in the world at doing?
2. What drives your economic engine?
3. What you are deeply passionate about?
The intersection of these circles provides the companys BHAGBig, Hairy, Audacious Goal.
BHAG focuses the team and the company to do great things. Therefore, it is inspiring, digging deep
inside people to motivate great achievements.
The BHAG is followed up with a culture of discipline. This is an environment without corporate
bureaucracy; a culture built around giving people freedom and responsibility. Discipline comes in
the form of self-discipline, with people willing to go to extreme measures to achieve incredible
results for the team and the company. Discipline also means a consistent adherence to the BHAG.
What lessons can people in the combined financial and technology field learn from Good to
Great? Chapter 7 in Good to Great is dedicated to technology: Technology Accelerators. This
chapter highlights companies that use technology as an enabling tool to help them achieve their
BHAG. They do not do technology for the cool factor or because their competition is doing it.
A prime example is the difference between the strategies of Drugstore.com and Walgreens.
Walgreens watched carefully what Drugstore.com was doing, went back to their BHAG, and fit
technology into their BHAG circles. Many were pushing Walgreens to jump into the Internet,
including the public markets where Drugstore.com stock was soaring. Walgreens BHAG is to have
convenient corner drugstores. Taking its time and implementing satellite communications and com-
puter network technology, Walgreens now has a strong, customer-centric website and network of
information between their stores, while Drugstore.com is struggling.
Many times in IT projects we face difficult situations, unmet expectations by users, and blown
budgets. We can learn from the Stockdale Paradox. We must confront the brutal facts, communicate
these facts, and design a solution. As financial and technology professionals we must judge what
technology works and produce a sane budget, rational expectations, and manageable time lines.
As financial professionals, we watch over the economic viability of an organization. A main part
of the Hedgehog Concept is the Economic Denominator, or what drives the economic engine. We
can take a leading role in determining this important indicator. Examples of the economic denomina-
tor are:
1. Abbott: per employee
2. Circuit City: per geographic region
3. Walgreens: per customer visit
The last key of learning for technology and financial professionals is the importance of a high-
powered team, which consists of getting the right people on the team, establishing a BHAG, and

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Book Reviews 135

providing the self-discipline workplace to let people fulfill the team goals. The bottom line: its
about people doing meaningful work, giving them a meaningful life, which is a great life. What is a
great life? It is a life of great satisfaction, achievement, and striving toward excellencemaking a
difference.
WAYNE HARDING
CPA, CITP
CEO of AccTrak21

GELERNTER, DAVID, Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox: How
It Will Happen and What It Will Mean (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN:
0-19-507906-X, $17.95).
Mirror Worlds is based on a bold assertion: You will look into a computer screen and see
reality. Unfortunately, information systems and computer science writings often are loaded with
bold assertions, many of which are untrue. This leads us to ask:
What are mirror worlds?
How are mirror worlds built?
How do mirror worlds help us see the whole?
What data are used for mirror worlds?
Can mirror worlds exist?
What is the role of mirror worlds in IS teaching and research?

What Are Mirror Worlds?

Gelernter (p. 3) defines mirror worlds as software models of some chunk of reality, some piece
of the real world going on outside your window. Oceans of information pour endlessly into the model
so much information that the model can mimic realitys every move A mirror world traps the
mirror image of an organization or group of organizations in a computer model, embedded in a
model of the organizations environment.
In some cases, a mirror world captures the right now state of a project or organization: What is
going on inside the organization at this point in time? Since it contains a model of the organization, a
mirror world can also to simulate the organization under certain environmental conditions.

How Are Mirror Worlds Built?

Gelernter (p. 28) indicates that there are five key ingredients in the development of a mirror
world: a deep picture, a live picture, agents, history, and the knitting together of the other four
ingredients. Deep (and layered) pictures indicate that the mirror world has many levels, into or out
of which the user can zoom. Typically this means drill down capabilities from one level to another,
much in the same way Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables allow the user to drill down on a set of
organization accounting numbers, by year, by region, etc. Mirror worlds capture dynamic aspects of
organizations. Live pictures, based on current sensor data, show the user what is going on in real
time, right now, and how the world is changing over time. Computer agents represent agents or
actors in the real world. Typically, agents are intelligent. However, their behavior can be based on
simple rules, such as process first-in, first-out. Mirror worlds also include a history of the organi-
zation. History can include past data gathered about the organization. However, Gelernter also notes
that case-based reasoning or finding precedents from the organizations past can also be used as
part of the modeling. But perhaps the most important is how these four ingredients are knitted
together. Mirror worlds are based on knowing individual agent behavior, but without knowing
exactly what organizational behavior will emerge from the interaction of those independent agents.
As a result, mirror worlds have emergent behavior based on the interaction between semi-autonomous

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136 Book Reviews

agents. Knitting the ingredients together consists of having a program or set of programs that has
agents interacting with each other, while using contemporary data feeds from ongoing organizational
processes. Deep and live pictures give us different views of the model.

How Do Mirror Worlds Help Us See the Whole?

Managers cannot make sound decisions unless they view their organizations in their larger
environment, but too often they are caught with an ants view of the world. Gelernter (p. 30) notes,
Mirror worlds are devices for showing you the big picture. Mirror worlds attempt to capture the
whole thing. Too often people get stuck with an ants viewdamned likely to get stepped on ( p.
31). Mirror worlds facilitate top-sight or whole-sightedness since they provide deep, multilayer
pictures, and capture the emergent behavior of a set of interacting software agents. Top-sightedness
comes from a far overhead vantage point, from a birds eye view that reveals the whole(p. 52).

What Data Are Used for Mirror Worlds?

A wide range of sensors can gather data. In commerce, much sensor data are likely based on
financial data. Data available in real time can facilitate mirror-world modeling to study the
organizations situation, and to potentially provide an executives dashboard for what is going on in
the organization. As a result, data from electronic data interchange, web pages, or other electronic
exchanges could provide input to a mirror world. Accounting data, generated on a daily basis, also
could provide key inputs into a mirror world.

Can Such Mirror Worlds Exist?

Jump ahead ten years and see if Gelernter was on target. Research at the Santa Fe Institute and
Los Alamos National Laboratory has generated a number of start-up companies doing work in
complex adaptive systems theory, building what Gelernter might call mirror worlds. Melymuka
(2002) reports companies are beginning to use complex adaptive systems to plot future business
scenarios. Melymuka describes Procter & Gambles (P&G) use of mirror worlds. P&G built a
model of its supply chain in order to address questions such as What if supermarkets and other
customers shared information about planned product promotions that might change their supply
needs? Using this model and asking key questions has led to the realization of millions of dollars of
potential savings.
Jump one more year and Anthes (2003) also reports on P&Gs use of mirror worlds. Procter &
Gamble reports saving $300 million annually because of its ability to transform its supply chain. In
addition, reportedly, SAP, the large enterprise resource planning software firm, whose software is
used by P&G, is now experimenting with using mirror-world-type capabilities. Now prototype
mirror-world-like capabilities apparently are being built into SAPs supply chain software to meet
the needs of P&G and other advanced supply chain firms.
Further, Anthes (2003) provides a glimpse of P&Gs supply chain of the future, based on the
mirror world. In that vision, in the year 2008, end-to-end replenishment of a box of Tide laundry
detergent drops from the current four months to one day. As part of the new world, a world of
intelligent agents interact with each other. Flexi-plants replace specialized production plants; soft-
ware agents watch weather for its impact on transportation problems; software agents bid for materi-
als and production runs; agents at retailers guide shipments to those whose inventory is low; software
agents capture information about sales at customer locations and analyze the data; and smart shelves
tell retailers when to retrieve more product from the back room.
What Is the Role of Mirror Worlds in IS Teaching and Research?
Much of the discipline of information systems concerns processes and flows of information,
often referred to as best practices. Mirror worlds provide a way to generate and test best practices

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Book Reviews 137

at P&G. Mirror worlds today generate the best practices that will be taught tomorrow. Mirror worlds
anticipate the systems and best practices of tomorrow. When we are studying supply chain best
practices, I have found that it is useful to review the current best practices associated with P&Gs
supply chain (Clark and McKenney 1995), and then review how those best practices are likely to
change.
Mirror worlds are likely to be categorized as computer science, intelligent agents, artificial
intelligence, or knowledge management, each with good reason. As a result, research in mirror
worlds is likely to come from those academic disciplines. Computer science is likely to examine
architectural and design issues such as deep, multilayer pictures of the organization. Intelligent agent
researchers examining the use of intelligent agents in such systems are likely to examine issues such
as how different intelligent agents impact the system differently. Artificial intelligence researchers
are likely to examine alternative representations to, or approaches for, representing agent intelli-
gence. Knowledge management researchers could analyze knowledge representations or use of
knowledge. Other research could investigate issues associated with building mirror worlds, such as
understanding emergent behavior of such systems, understanding the role of accounting generated
history in mirror worlds, or validating and auditing such models.
But in the same sense that one of the primary goals of mirror worlds is seeing the emergent
whole, mirror worlds are more focused on organizations and the problems that organizations face,
and they are less focused on particular technologies.

Mirror Worlds
Mirror worlds provide the hope of anticipating what will happen and monitoring what is hap-
pening, as it happens. Mirror worlds provide the ability to generate and test new best practices for
their emergent impact.
DANIEL E. OLEARY
University of Southern California

REFERENCES
Anthes, G. 2003. Agents of change. Computerworld (January 27): 2627.
Clark, T. H., and J. L. McKenney. 1995. Procter & Gamble: Improving Consumer Value through Process
Redesign. HBS Case #9-195-126. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School.
Melymuka, K. 2002.What if ? Computerworld (February 4): 2627.

Journal of Information Systems, Fall 2003