Information and the modern corporation

A guide to information as the transformative tool of modern business. While we have been preoccupied with the latest i-gadget from Apple and with Google's ongoing expansion, we may have missed something- the fundamental transformation of whole firms and industries into giant information-processing machines. Today, more than eighty percent of workers collect and analyze information (often in digital form) in the course of doing their jobs. This book offers a guide to the role of information in modern business, mapping the use of information within work processes and tracing flows of information across supply-chain management, product development, customer relations, and sales. The emphasis is on information itself, not on information technology. Information, overshadowed for a while by the glamour and novelty of IT, is the fundamental component of the modern corporation.
In Information and the Modern Corporation, longtime IBM manager and consultant James Cortada clarifies the differences among data, facts, information, and knowledge and describes how the art of analytics has all but eliminated decision making based on gut feeling, replacing it with fact-based decisions. He describes the working style of "road warriors," whose offices are anywhere their laptops and cell phones are and whose deep knowledge of a given topic becomes their medium of exchange.
Information is the core of the modern enterprise, and the use of information defines the activities of a firm. This essential guide shows managers and employees better ways to leverage information-by design and not by accident.

Author Notes

James W. Cortada is Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota and the author of Information and the Modern Corporation (MIT Press) and other books. He worked at IBM for thirty-eight years in sales, consulting, managerial, and research positions.

Reviews 1

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Just mention the acronym IT and most modern-day workers will wince, at the very least. It and IT often signifies messy change and the inability to get work-mandated information at the right time, in the right ways, from very complicated systems. Yet the layperson's explanation of technology's role today (and tomorrow), and its very human component, has been missing. IBM-er and prodigious author Cortada (Making the Information Society, 2001, and The Digital Hand, 2003, are but two) clarifies, distills, and amplifies the IT world, beginning with the differences between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (Then there is wisdom: The ability to make sense of data, information, and knowledge in ways that are relevant to an organization) and concluding with some straightforward rules of the road for any enterprise worker, now and in the future. In essence, he demystifies consultantese, showing the importance of process and supply chains in global corporations and pinpointing trends as well as not-so-future implications. That same rigor he applies to new products, market, and what he calls digital plumbing, gently pointing out why the human element of business can't and won't disappear. For you, for all of us, the path to work wisdom and success. An easy and important read.--Jacobs, Barbar. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Series Foreword	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
1 Working the Digital Way	p. 1
2 Knowledge Management-More Corporate Glue	p. 21
3 The Informed Supply Chain	p. 33
4 New Products and Marketing in a Digitized World	p. 55
5 "Digital Plumbing" in the Modern Organization	p. 79
6 The Structure of the Modern Organization	p. 99
7 The Future of Information in the Modern Enterprise	p. 127
For Further Information	p. 151
Glossary	p. 153
Index	p. 157

Available:*

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews 1

Booklist Review

Table of Contents