Information, Technology, and Innovation: Resources for Growth in a Connected World
Incredibly rapid innovation is a hallmark of our time. The social media discount site Groupon went from revenues of $33 million in 2009 to $760 million in 2010. Facebook has crossed 800 million users since its launch in a dorm room seven years ago. Kiva—the online lending platform—funded $200 million in microloans to people around the world in less than six years. While these types of organizations and achievements were inconceivable only a decade ago, many other corporate giants have either lost their competitive foothold or completely closed shop.Information, Technology, and Innovationprovides you with the tools and knowledge to survive the shifting sands of today's rapidly changing business models.Author and IT strategist John Jordan examines basic principles underlying technology, management, and economics to show how rapid innovation is reinventing competition in today's fast-paced global marketplace. Addressing the many ways in which IT has drastically altered the business landscape over the past forty years—the personal computer, the Internet, GPS, cell phones, and smartphones—Information, Technology, and Innovationreviews the consequences of our technological revolution and shows how to move forward by incorporating these traits into new innovations.By examining several recently displaced industries,Information, Technology, and Innovationreveals a variety of ways that technology innovation can translate into a mix of threats to established patterns of business behavior, as well as opportunities, including:The Music Industry: How at least a dozen changes to the music industry business model—including MTV and the surge of mega-retailers—helped set the stage for the disruptive threat from NapsterNewspapers: Was Google the sole culprit in the demise of news readership and will the increase of tablet users help re-energize the business?Health Care: How Wal-Mart, CVS, and Walgreens are placing clinics in selected pharmacies to address routine matters that would often otherwise require an emergency room visitInformation, Technology, and Innovationalso discusses the various technologies you can use as building blocks to move your business forward and concludes with five broad areas of rapid change in the foreseeable future.The ways people behave, relate to each other, and organize themselves to work are changing at warp speed.Information, Technology, and Innovationshows you how to make sense of today's rapid changes by moving beyond a mindset of optimization. Instead, the wealth of technological and organizational changes is the starting point for tomorrow's business transformations.