Technology Shift and Business Operation Interdependence: The case of Internet in Securities Trading

Companies today use IT extensively, especially so in the financial industry. This makes managing technology an important management issue. When new technologies arrive managing technology shifts prudently becomes vital for gaining or sustaining competitive advantages. This paper addresses the interdependences between such technology shifts and the business operations by using the world wide web and securities trading as an example. The first main argument made in the paper is that characterizing technology shifts as such is less fruitful than relating the technology shift to the business of the adopting company. What is a disruptive technology to one company may well be a sustaining technology to the next, even when the companies are by many standards quite similar. The second argument made builds on a proposed distinction between the technology provider and the technology consumer roles and states that adopting certain technologies implies becoming a technology provider. It is illustrated how this adds an extra level of difficulty to technology adoption as one’s business operations is extended to incorporate this new role. Hence, a technology shift may not only change the current business operations of a company, it may induce changes in what business the company actually conducts.