Remove Cost Center Remove Management Remove Marketing Remove Technology
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IT Has Finally Cracked the C-Suite

Harvard Business Review

Recently I’ve been having a very hard time talking to students, executives, and business leaders about information technology. In too many companies, IT leaders, relegated to their cost centers, are subordinate to other C-level executives. With the cloud, business units can take responsibility for their own technology.

CIO 11
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How to Compete When IT Is Abundant

Harvard Business Review

Carr predicted that an organization''s ability to compete through investing in information technology was about to change dramatically. The IT boom of the 1980s and early ''90s had brought information technology to the corporate masses, unleashing the first full-scale technology revolution in the enterprise. Why is this?

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Shadow IT Is Out of the Closet

Harvard Business Review

An impatient marketing or finance manager would, on the sly, secure some extra budget money and hire a contractor to build a little database that tracked mailing addresses or top-line financials. Slowly but surely, as the little database grew bigger and bigger, the manager would wedge the cost into her operating budget.

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There Are 4 Futures for CMOs (Some Better Than Others)

Harvard Business Review

These executives have responsibilities we might expect to reside within marketing. That leaves Chief Marketing Officers with a decision — do you see the rise of these roles as an opportunity or a threat? Marketing faces a particular challenge since customer engagement has traditionally been considered its domain.

CEO 8
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The Internet Shouldn’t Run on Dirty Energy

Harvard Business Review

This year, the Department of Energy, through its National Renewable Energy Laboratory, found that more than one hundred information and communication technology companies that consume an estimated 1.5% Here’s why now is the time right to invest in renewable energy sources for the internet: Renewable energy can help reduce a cost center.

Energy 8
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The First Step to Fixing U.S. Manufacturing

Harvard Business Review

But while the largest US firms have seen their domestic revenues grow more than twice as fast as the sector average even in the domestic market, their smaller suppliers—the firms that provide them with the materials and components they depend on—have experienced negative growth. manufacturers are taking notice.

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A Kodak Moment to Reconsider the Value of IT

Harvard Business Review

It helps students see that Kodak did not understand or invest in the digital technologies that were to sweep away its business, a failure usually attributed to incumbent executive myopia. It's conceivable that IT's views could have saved the company, had the culture been different and had executive management been willing to listen.

CIO 9