Does IT Matter ?

he or she is an executive of uncommon intelligence and curiosity: the brightest CEO you know or can imagine, perhaps. We like to pretend that our ideal reader has chartered us to prepare a briefing every month. On the agenda, we've been told, should be three kinds of items. First, our reader says, bring me important new ideas, research, or insights: " Boss, here's something you should know. " Second, bring me important eternal truths, rediscovered and refreshed: " Boss, here's something you shouldn't forget. " Third, bring me into the picture about important issues and arguments: " Boss, here's something you will want to know about. " New ideas, truths, and disputes: When we do our job well, HBR is a forum where you get some of each, and all of it is important. Nicholas G. Carr's " IT Doesn't Matter, " published in the May 2003 issue, falls into the third category. It takes one side of an argument that's undeniably urgent and important to business leaders. In 2000, nearly half of U.S. corporate capital spending went to information technology. Then the spending collapsed and the Nasdaq with it, and in every boardroom–and in every technology company–people began to wonder: What happened? What was that spending about? What's changed? What has not? And what do we do now? What is our technology strategy, and how does it affect our corporate strategy? Forcefully, Carr argues that investments in IT, while profoundly important , are less and less likely to deliver a competitive edge to an individual company. " No one would dispute that information technology has become the backbone of commerce, " Carr says. " The point is, however, that the tech-nology's potential for differentiating one company from the pack – its strategic potential – inexorably diminishes as it becomes accessible and affordable to all. " Unsurprisingly, " IT Doesn't Matter " has generated an enormous amount of controversy. Our ideal reader wants that give-and-take, argument and counter-argument, the better to understand the issues. Always in such cases, people are more likely to write to us when they disagree with an article's point of view than when they agree with it. Always in such cases, a few people mistake the argument. (In this instance, the most common misperception is that the article says that IT is dead and that it will not continue to be a source of dramatic, …