Carr vs Mcafee

It Doesn’t Matter By Nicholas G. Carr V.S. Investing In The IT That Makes A Competitive Difference

Putting these articles together there are several point differences between the two one stating that IT is s commodity and the other arguing that IT needs competitive difference. “Nick Carr, in IT Doesn’t Matter for competition — that competitive dynamics remain unchanged as firms make their individual IT investments. IT brings productivity and performance benefits, but it brings them to all competitors equally. As a result, according to Carr, IT is "a cost of doing business that must be paid by all, but provides distinction to none."” (A. Mcafee, 2007) There is a big debate on agreement of the two authors in computerworld where Mcafee and other Professors disagree that IT Does Matter. Andrew Mcafee does not agree that IT doesn’t matter, but he thinks nick wrote a really interesting article. Carr stats that “Information Technology has become so pervasive that, like railroads and electricity, it has lost its strategic value.” Mcafee argues back stating in a article “It's a matter of whether we're talking about IT enhancing productivity or competition. The telephone has made us able to get more done in a day. Has the phone continued to radically affect the competitive balance among companies? No. That's Nick's point. Some kinds of IT fall into that category. For example, e-mail. We all have it; we all use it. But it's not competition-changing, so overinvesting in it is not a great idea. The bases of competition revolve around other things. [But] there are industries where technologies are fundamentally important. Dell has an IT business-process automation infrastructure that really works. If you don't have one of those, do you have a hope of competing in that industry? And even if you want to put one of those in place, there will be a really big difference in how successful you are vs. another company, because it's tough organizational change in a technology wrapper....