- The Company That Couldn't Run a Second Shift
- So Does IT Really Matter?
- What Really Matters
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So Does IT Really Matter?
In light of the Company X case study, let's reconsider Carr's premise. We'll start with definitions for investment in two types of technology: proprietary technology and infrastructure technology. For investment in infrastructure technology, think of things like networks and relational database management systems; investment in proprietary technology goes to company-specific systems that may be invented to sit on top of the infrastructure technology.
The issue is when contrasting investment in infrastructure technology with that in proprietary technology. Carr makes the case that since you can't easily protect intellectual property as it relates to proprietary technology, there's no strategic advantage in it; as technology becomes standardized faster and faster, the moment one company invents it, the next company can copy it and immediately realize the same gains. This is intellectual child's play. Of course infrastructure that is commonly available, standardized, and commoditized is not strategic. Nobody—other than perhaps vendors of such technology—would sensibly argue that it is strategic.
There is a critical flaw in Carr's argument, however: Just because one operator in a marketplace is able to make a proprietary technology advance, it doesn't mean that others will, even if the proprietary advance has zero intellectual property protection. Think about technologically backward companies that are losing ground, like Company X.
Technical debt not only increases costs to maintain software; its real corrosive effect is that it more drastically increases the cost (while decreasing the likelihood) of a given company's replicating a competitor's innovations. Proprietary technology innovations are not like the secret recipe for Coca-Cola, which, if known, could easily be replicated. The ability to profit from proprietary technology innovations depends on the context—the existing systems, people, and company culture. A company with little technical debt, an engaged workforce, and a culture that accepts intelligent risk-taking will be able to leverage new technology in a manner far superior to that of a company that's loaded with technical debt, has a sullen workforce, and has a culture of risk aversion.
Even if it had the codebase for a new system to do order intake and processing 24 hours a day in 10 different languages, Company X wouldn't be able to implement it effectively. Why not? Because, no matter how often I give a chimpanzee a scalpel and a copy of Brain Surgery for Dummies, I'm unlikely ever to create the first chimpanzee brain surgeon.