What is Our Plan?

Please keep three issues in mind that answer why IT matters in business (Dhar and Sundararajan, 2007).

1. IT continually transforms industry and society,
2. Executive decisions about IT investments, governance, and strategy are critical to organizational success, and
3. Deriving value from increasingly available data trails defines effective decision-making in the digital economy.

IT is intertwined with business, so you probably have explored some effects of IT in other areas, such as operations, supply chain, and corporate innovations. This course builds on the preceding courses by investigating the newer digital innovations. However, you may encounter a couple of older classic cases which have stood the test of time. The digital innovations and topics chosen for the course are based on our perception of their importance and potential.

Topics of interest vary, and we continually update the course syllabi. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. Make sure that your reasoning is sound.

We plan to rely on cases, simulations, and/or report writing. Our objective is to develop a way of thinking, so our assignments and questions require critical and analytical thinking. You will be given detailed rubrics for assignments.

The following are general expectations for this course.

• Some students may have strong technical backgrounds, and others may have a more business-focused or strategic orientation. All of you have used at least productivity software and probably have experience with transaction processing systems. If you do not have any professional experience with IT, then perhaps you can relate your experiences as a technology consumer.
• You are not interested in specific applications but in the strategic and operational ramifications of IT.
• You are more interested in analysis, evaluation, and decisions than reading a long list of facts.
• You can all find information from libraries, the Internet, large language models, or plain printed books.
• You like to read and work.

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