Synthesizes a body of research and theories relating to the way firms can undergo transformation in order to remain competitive in a changing business environment. This book includes the coordination and alignment of a firm's business strategy.

Like the first edition, Competing in the Information Age: Align in the Sand, Second Edition, synthesizes for practicing managers the compelling, recent work in this area, with themes that focus on the continuous transformation in business, the adoption of information intensive management practices, the improvement of information processing, and the alignment of business strategy and information technology strategy. Information technology management is now considered a core competency among managers. Rapid advancements in technology, dynamic markets, and the changing business environment have created increased demand for professionals who can manage and deliver information systems. Information systems professionals, Chief Information Officers, Chief Knowledge Officers, as well as CFOs and CEOs, are required to lead and evolve information resources while partnering with corporate management. This book shows IT professionals how to help their organizations achieve success through alignment and deployment of business and IT strategies.

"a provocative new book" — The New York Times AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value. Now with a new preface that explores how the coronavirus crisis compelled organizations such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Verizon, and IKEA to transform themselves with remarkable speed, Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, allow massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and create powerful opportunities for learning—to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions. When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear. Iansiti and Lakhani: Present a framework for rethinking business and operating models Explain how "collisions" between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition, altering the structure of our economy, and forcing traditional companies to rearchitect their operating models Explain the opportunities and risks created by digital firms Describe the new challenges and responsibilities for the leaders of both digital and traditional firms Packed with examples—including many from the most powerful and innovative global, AI-driven competitors—and based on research in hundreds of firms across many sectors, this is your essential guide for rethinking how your firm competes and operates in the era of AI.

Like the first edition, Competing in the Information Age: Align in the Sand, Second Edition, synthesizes for practicing managers the compelling, recent work in this area, with themes that focus on the continuous transformation in business, the adoption of information intensive management practices, the improvement of information processing, and the alignment of business strategy and information technology strategy. Information technology management is now considered a core competency among managers. Rapid advancements in technology, dynamic markets, and the changing business environment have created increased demand for professionals who can manage and deliver information systems. Information systems professionals, Chief Information Officers, Chief Knowledge Officers, as well as CFOs and CEOs, are required to lead and evolve information resources while partnering with corporate management. This book shows IT professionals how to help their organizations achieve success through alignment and deployment of business and IT strategies.

A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies. Managers and entrepreneurs in the digital era must learn to live in two worlds—the conventional economy and the platform economy. Platforms that operate for business purposes usually exist at the level of an industry or ecosystem, bringing together individuals and organizations so they can innovate and interact in ways not otherwise possible. Platforms create economic value far beyond what we see in conventional companies. The Business of Platforms is an invaluable, in-depth look at platform strategy and digital innovation. Cusumano, Gawer, and Yoffie address how a small number of companies have come to exert extraordinary influence over every dimension of our personal, professional, and political lives. They explain how these new entities differ from the powerful corporations of the past. They also question whether there are limits to the market dominance and expansion of these digital juggernauts. Finally, they discuss the role governments should play in rethinking data privacy laws, antitrust, and other regulations that could reign in abuses from these powerful businesses. Their goal is to help managers and entrepreneurs build platform businesses that can stand the test of time and win their share of battles with both digital and conventional competitors. As experts who have studied and worked with these firms for some thirty years, this book is the most authoritative and timely investigation yet of the powerful economic and technological forces that make platform businesses, from Amazon and Apple to Microsoft, Facebook, and Google—all dominant players in shaping the global economy, the future of work, and the political world we now face.

Electronic information networks offer extraordinary advantages to business, government, and individuals in terms of power, capacity, speed, accessibility, and cost. But these same capabilities present substantial privacy issues. With an unprecedented amount of data available in digital format--which is easier and less expensive to access, manipulate, and store--others know more about you than ever before. Consider this: data routinely collected about you includes your health, credit, marital, educational, and employment histories; the times and telephone numbers of every call you make and receive; the magazines you subscribe to and the books your borrow from the library; your cash withdrawals; your purchases by credit card or check; your electronic mail and telephone messages; where you go on the World Wide Web. The ramifications of such a readily accessible storehouse of information are astonishing. Governments have responded to these new challenges to personal privacy in a wide variety of ways. At one extreme, the European Union in 1995 enacted sweeping regulation to protect personal information; at the other extreme, privacy law in the United States and many other countries is fragmented, inconsistent, and offers little protection for privacy on the internet and other electronic networks. For all the passion that surrounds discussions about privacy, and the recent attention devoted to electronic privacy, surprisingly little consensus exists about what privacy means, what values are served--or compromised--by extending further legal protection to privacy, what values are affected by existing and proposed measures designed to protect privacy, and what principles should undergird a sensitive balancing of those values. In this book, Fred Cate addresses these critical issues in the context of computerized information. He provides an overview of the technologies that are provoking the current privacy debate and discusses the range of legal issues that these technologies raise. He examines the central elements that make up the definition of privacy and the values served, and liabilities incurred, by each of those components. Separate chapters address the regulation of privacy in Europe and the United States. The final chapter identifies four sets of principles for protecting information privacy. The principles recognize the significance of individual and collective nongovernmental action, the limited role for privacy laws and government enforcement of those laws, and the ultimate goal of establishing multinational principles for protecting information privacy. Privacy in the Information Age involves questions that cut across the fields of business, communications, economics, and law. Cate examines the debate in provocative, jargon-free, detail.

Widely praised for its balanced treatment of computer ethics, Ethics for the Information Age offers a modern presentation of the moral controversies surrounding information technology. Topics such as privacy and intellectual property are explored through multiple ethical theories, encouraging readers to think critically about these issues and to make their own ethical decisions.