I was finally able to read the entire HBR case study by Andrew McAfree and Erik Brynjolfsson (When BART tracks catch on fire, I’m provided with endless amounts of time to read). Its the ‘longer’ version of McAfree’s video he has posted on his blog that he taped-but I recommend reading the case study over the video.

The paper has some great examples – CVS, Cisco, Oits – of companies that have successfully increased their IT investment and have come away with a better operating model, while increasing customer satisfactions, implemented company wide and, in the example of CVS, all within a year. A year-imagine that.

McAfree and Brynjolfsson credit the increase of IT investment and the ‘overabundance of new technologies’ as part of a new era that companies have entered after the 1990s, which “enabled improvements to companies’ operating model and then made it possible to replicate those improvements much more widely.”

The advancements of newly increased investment in IT has shown to be very beneficial – ex: Otis and their distribution of elevators only when the front line manager certifies the site to be ready for delivery, rather than the traditional delivery method of shipping the elevator the day the factory is finished assembling it. Increase in IT investment have also increased the three quantifiable indicators the authors used in their research – those are; concentration, turbulence and performance spread.

Great read overall.