The main theme for WISE over the years has been to uncover the economic value created by IT in business, and to a lesser extent (some of us hope to change that), in society. If I had to point to one source where this collective wisdom is made accessible to all its the new book titled Wired for Innovation by Erik Brynjolfsson (MIT) and Adam Saunders (Wharton). Its a great read and future CEMBA students can expect it to be assigned as pre-class reading.
Among the interesting themes in the book is the notion that traditional national income accounting methods (think GDP calculations) woefully underestimate the value created by digital goods and platforms. A couple of interesting examples from the book - if you buy a $1 copy of the NY Times its shows up in the GDP, but if you spend 30 minutes on NYTimes.com, it does not show up. Likewise, whats the value to consumers of better information (say from free Google searches) or newer platforms such as eBay. They cite our Consumer Surplus in Online Auctions paper in the journal Information Systems Research where we demonstrate that in 2003 consumers got close $7 billion in welfare gains from eBay. In contrast, their revenues, which would have showed up in that year's GDP was $2.1 billion!
On a personal note, our above-mentioned paper was selected as one of five best IS papers by a committee of senior scholars. Regretably, neither me nor my co-authors (Galit Shmueli and Wolfgang Jank) will be at ICIS 2009 to receive this in person.
Off to Phoenix and then to warm India tomorrow!
Happy holidays to all and peace on earth.
