http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/ en-us 2007-05-06T19:27:47-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_strategic_value.shtml Sometimes, the most powerful innovations may lie outside your company's core business. By Nicholas Carr What were André and Edouard Michelin thinking? In 1900, shortly after the two brothers took control of their family’s venerable rubber business, they suddenly decided to publish a guidebook for tourists. Their Michelin Red Guide provided information on gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and other roadside attractions along with various maps and driving tips. The brothers printed 35,000 copies of the first edition - and gave them away free. According to our contemporary notions of business logic, the move seems hard to justify. After all, book... Nick 2007-05-06T19:27:47-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/disruption_from_above.shtml Disruptive innovations, it's been argued, emerge at the bottom of the market and work their way up into the mainstream. But powerful disruptions can also come from the top down. by Nicholas Carr They’re the stuff of entrepreneurs’ dreams and CEOs’ nightmares. They made Andy Grove paranoid and Bill Gates rich. They’re what propelled Wal-Mart past Sears and what spurred the rise — and subsequent collapse — of the Digital Equipment Corporation. They’re what we’ve come to call disruptive innovations. Our understanding of these epoch-making technologies, products, and business models has been shaped largely by the works of Harvard professor... Nick 2006-09-11T08:08:28-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/great_product_lousy.shtml As the story of the Concorde reveals, even the greatest inventions may never take flight in the marketplace. by Nicholas Carr Early one summer morning in 1909, a man on crutches hobbled across a field near the seaside town of Sangatte in northwestern France and approached a small airplane built of wood and cloth. Although his foot had been badly burned in a recent flying accident, he was determined to do what no pilot had done before: cross the English Channel. Ignoring a last plea from his wife to abandon the venture, he hoisted himself into the tiny seat that... Nick 2006-07-17T16:12:15-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/conservative_innovation.shtml Creating disruptions is fine. Mending them can be even better. by Nicholas Carr For most of human history, long-distance communication was a cumbersome affair. Documents had to be carried on foot or horseback, or in the holds of ships, and they often took weeks or months to arrive at their destination. Then, in 1835, a New York University professor named Samuel F.B. Morse invented the telegraph, and the world changed. Suddenly, it was possible to send messages down wires and cables, instantaneously connecting people and businesses in different countries or on different continents. The rise of the telegraph system was... Nick 2006-04-10T12:20:14-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_sixth_force_strategy.shtml by Nicholas G. Carr What’s the greatest strategic challenge facing Wal-Mart today? It’s not competition from other retailers. Although the world’s biggest merchant certainly keeps a close eye on rivals like Target and Best Buy, its domination of the industry seems secure for the time being. It’s not pressure from suppliers. Wal-Mart has most makers of consumer packaged goods at its beck and call. And it isn’t the whims of buyers. Shoppers show little desire to abandon their favorite store and its dirt-cheap prices. No, Wal-Mart’s biggest worry today is the public interest. Whether it’s local activists scotching plans for... Nick 2006-01-30T22:48:27-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_dreams_of_suits.shtml by Nicholas G. Carr In the popular psychology of business, the modern company is split in two. There’s the organization’s creative right brain - the restless, rag-tag collection of researchers, product developers, marketers and technologists who dream big dreams and think in the future tense. And then there’s the rational left brain - the financial analysts, accountants and controllers who crunch the numbers and balance the books, their field of vision reaching only so far as the end of the current quarter. The former are innovation’s free-wheeling champions; the latter are its risk-fearing enemies. It’s a tidy little dichotomy, but... Nick 2005-11-07T21:40:35-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_prudent_innovator.shtml by Nicholas G. Carr Management thinking has for some time been dominated by two big themes: leadership and innovation. It’s not hard to see why. Both are important yet amorphous subjects. As resistant to definition as they are essential to business success, they offer unbounded opportunities for exposition and exploration to researcher, philosopher, and charlatan alike. They have something else in common, too. It’s come to be assumed that leadership and innovation are universally good qualities to which all should aspire. Through high-minded training programs, reward systems, and communication efforts, companies today routinely seek to democratize innovativeness and leadership —... Nick 2005-09-25T15:24:58-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/a_modest_proposal_for.shtml by Nicholas G. Carr Amazon.com turns ten this week, a good occasion for some partying – and a little soul-searching, too. Amazon’s rapid growth testifies to the vision and daring of its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos. Bezos’s refusal to play by the rules is the reason he now runs the world’s largest Internet store. Back in 1994, when retailing’s big guns were oblivious to the Web, he was staking his claim to the vast new territory. He saw what the rest of the pack was blind to. But now that Bezos heads a $7 billion public company, he’s... Nick 2005-07-10T09:02:11-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_new_pioneers.shtml By Nicholas G. Carr Over the last 50 years, if you wanted to get a sense of the future of business computing, you just had to look at what big companies were doing. Building or buying new systems required a lot of capital, and it was only the largest and best-funded businesses that could afford to be out on the cutting edge. Smaller organizations would wait until costs came down, then follow dutifully in the footsteps of the big guys. But that old pattern is being turned on its head. Today, many of computing’s pioneers are small or medium-sized organizations... Nick 2005-07-01T23:00:34-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/the_great_tech_disruption.shtml By Nicholas G. Carr The following is an excerpt from the article "The End of Corporate Computing," which appears in the Spring 2005 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review. A copy of the full article can be downloaded here. Something happened in the first years of the 20th century that would have seemed unthinkable just a few decades earlier: Manufacturers began to shut down and dismantle their waterwheels, steam engines and electric generators. Since the beginning of the Industrial Age, mills and factories had had no choice but to maintain private power plants to run their machinery — power... Nick 2005-04-29T09:05:16-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/sons_of_dracula.shtml Enterprise-software makers are like vampires. They need fresh blood to survive. That's why SAP and Oracle found themselves in a bidding war last month for a previously little-known Minneapolis outfit named Retek. The small software company has carved out a niche providing complex applications tailored to the needs of chain stores and other merchants. For SAP and Oracle, the retailing business stands as one of the last great pools of virgin customers. Retailers have long taken a go-it-alone approach to software development. Because they have unique operating requirements, like getting the right mix of merchandise onto the right shelves at... Nick 2005-04-20T23:03:36-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/rethinking_the_pc.shtml Issue #7: March 9, 2005 Nick 2005-03-09T16:08:19-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/do_web_services_matter.shtml Issue #6: January 17, 2005 Nick 2005-01-15T14:54:16-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/moores_law_rip.shtml Issue #5: October 18, 2004 Nick 2004-10-17T15:11:12-05:00 http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/digital_renderings/archives/whats_a_cio_to_do.shtml Issue #4: September 4, 2004 Nick 2004-09-04T20:05:41-05:00