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Leader: Could IT suffer a Carr crash?
Is it spouting off or does Harvard man have a point?

By silicon.com

Published: Thursday 05 October 2006

Nicholas Carr has thrown fresh salt into the wounds of an IT industry that appears to still be smarting from his 2003 critical essay entitled 'IT doesn't matter', which appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

This time around Carr is telling companies to stop buying IT and to ditch any notion of early adoption. He argues the early adopter ends up paying far more than the followers and gets very little competitive advantage in return.

In a nutshell, Carr believes IT is not what it's cracked up to be and certainly isn't worth the high prices vendors demand.

That's got to hurt somebody - or at least it will if they take the words of Carr seriously enough to let it get to them.

On the one hand it's very easy to assume Carr is simply swimming against an unturnable tide because he wants the notoriety. He managed to sell a book on the back of the outcry that followed his 2003 proclamations. And being contrary is a lot more interesting than being 'on message', after all.

However, it also seems fair to note that there is some truth in what Carr says. The headline message may be what secures him speaking engagements but there are some words of wisdom beneath the baiting.

Many businesses have been misled or have fallen into the trap of believing a big spend on IT is a necessary step on the route to major success. And this simply isn't true - the people and processes and the way the IT is implemented and used are key.

Good people will go further with mediocre IT than bad people will with the most up-to-date, all-singing, all-dancing software - it seems a fair assumption, as talent will always find a way.

So we should take on board the message that IT isn't a cure-all - it won't cover up the cracks in any business and an approach that assumes simply plugging something in and pressing the on switch will turn around a business is unlikely to achieve anything more than simply making yet another vendor very happy.