Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology

Author: Peter Weill, Marianne Broadbent
List Price: $32.50
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ISBN: 0875848303
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (June, 1998)
Sales Rank: 53,561
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
Strategically investing in IT to achieve the market edge.
Information technology has made possible the Information Age. Today, organizations are wrestling with the monumentally complex decisions about how to invest in this ever-advancing technology-investment decisions that are shaping the competitive destiny of corporations. How such decisions are made and how they should be made is at the heart of this book. The central theme is linking strategy with a firm's IT portfolio: its total investment in an IT infrastructure. The authors explore four approaches to such infrastructure investment decisions, ranging from none to an enabling view that positions the firm to optimize its IT core competence in a strategically flexible manner.

The authors have synthesized the approach market leaders take to leveraging IT. This books shows how IT creates business value and how top performing firms use IT in alignment with their current and future needs and goals. The book's concluding section addresses how to manage the IT portfolio for optimum business results. The work includes a useful grouping of infrastructure services into 8 management clusters. Reading this book is a delightful educational experience; it is also requisite reading for all strategists.


Rating: 5 out of 5
REQUISITE READING for Information Age strategists.
Information technology has made possible the Information Age. Today, organizations are wrestling with the monumentally complex decisions about how to invest in this ever-advancing technology-investment decisions that are shaping the competitive destiny of corporations. How such decisions are made and how they should be made is at the heart of this book.

The central theme is linking strategy with a firm's IT portfolio: its total investment in an IT infrastructure. The authors explore four approaches to such infrastructure investment decisions, ranging from none to an enabling view that positions the firm to optimize its IT core competence in a strategically flexible manner. The authors have synthesized the approach market leaders take to leveraging IT. This books reveals how IT creates business value, and how top performing firms use IT in alignment with their current and future needs and goals. The book's concluding section addresses how to manage the IT portfolio for optimum business results. The book includes, among many of its nuggests, a useful grouping of infrastructure services into 8 management clusters.

Reading this book is a delightful educational experience; it is also REQUISITE READING for all strategists. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and the Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.


Rating: 4 out of 5
Thorough Survey
I found this book quite helpful for my team. It covers the current issues quickly and well. Although it is repetitive, the book presents a tapestry that steers thinking in IT toward strategic alignment. The book lays the foundation for the holistic integration of IT and business strategy, using techniques (though not explicitly) of portfolio management, continuous improvement, teambuilding, and enterprise architecture modeling.

I highly recommend this book. It should be paired with a more enterprise architecture centric book to provide a complete actionable background. That said, the book stands alone to plant the foundation for successful IT/Strategy convergence.

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