Quotes - Productivity

It's becoming more common to hear CIOs and CXOs talk about—even mandate—measuring intangibles and showing more ROI from IT initiatives. Is this necessarily a good thing? Is there too much emphasis on the metrics vs. business value?


A: A lot of CIOs have disappointed me lately. In the 1990s, they were creative about transforming business—maybe even overzealous at times. But the pendulum has swung back too far. When I discuss IT productivity, all they hear is: "How do I cut costs in the IT function?" That's too narrow a definition of productivity. The discussion shouldn't be just about cutting costs, nor just about the IT function, for that matter. Productivity is about changing the way the whole company works to deliver more value. CIOs should be interacting with the business side. Merrill Lynch's CTO, Stephen Norman, is doing good things in this regard. So are CIOs Rick Dalzell at Amazon, Sinclair Stockman at BT, and Brad Boston at Cisco.

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Erik Brynjolfsson is professor of management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the Center for eBusiness at MIT. His research and teaching focus on how businesses can effectively use IT in general and the Internet in particular.