Group 7

Deepali Gupta
Deepti Yadav
Neha Khairwal
FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE LA SOCIÉTÉ
Tasya Katiyar
1. IT gives strategical advantage in early adoption phase
2. Proprietary technology gives an advantage while protected
3. When the infrastructural technologies reach the buildout phase they become
commodity
4. Strategic advantage shifts to the “risk management”
5. Spending less on IT gives a competitive advantage
• 1965 – 2000 = 50% of capital
• World business spend over $2 trillion a year
• Shifting attitude of top management towards competitive advantage
• Problem: assumption that as IT’s potency and ubiquity have increased, so too
has its strategic value
• By now the core functions of IT have become available and affordable to all
• Their power and presence have become to transform them from potentially
strategic resources into commodity factors of production
• How the technologies influence competition at the firm level
• Proprietary technologies: as long as they remain protected, can be a long term
strategic advantage
• Infrastructural technologies offer far more value when shared then when used
in isolation
• Restricted access and superior insight in technology gives advantages over
rivals (e.g. Electricity, steam train…)
• There is an initial frenzy in technology uptake
• The trap: assuming that opportunities for advantage will be available
indefinitely
• After the buildout phase: creation of standards
• Standards are beneficial at the macro economic level
• Only competitive advantage for forms is cost reduction
• IT is an infrastructural technology
• IT is a transport mechanism: interconnectivity
• IT is highly replicable
• Most of the business processes become replicable
• IT Becomes an utility (e.g. fee based services)
• + Investments = Overcapacity consequently surge in productivity
• Gordon Moore: predictions about doubling computing power every 2 years
• Ex. Sites on WWW has grown from 0 to 40 million in 10 years
• Ex. American Hospital Supply (AHS) with Analytic Systems Automated
Purchasing (ASAP)
• Standardization leads to lucrative monopolies whereas the vendors are
changing the business model to “Web Services” and subscriptions (e.g.
Microsoft Office
• When the buildout of and infrastructural technology has concluded?
• IT’s power is outstripping most of the business needs it fulfills
• IT functionality has dropped and is affordable to all
• The universal distribution network has caught up with demand
• IT vendors are positioning as commodity suppliers
• The investment bubble has burst