IDC Forum: Is IT creativity dead?

IDG News Service - Pouring fuel on the debate over whether IT provides a competitive advantage to corporations, a pair of prominent industry observers today offered starkly different views of the role computer technology can play in transforming business strategy.
IT has become such a commodity that any strategic advantage from being on the cutting edge of technology is likely to be short-lived and costly, argued Nicholas G. Carr, a former editor of the Harvard Business Review who garnered widespread notoriety last year for an article titled "IT Doesn't Matter" in that magazine and for a related book published this year (see stories and reaction).
Carr, speaking in Paris during the first day of the European IT Forum put on by market research company IDC, was followed by business consultant Don Tapscott, who told conference attendees that IT can spark business model changes that help companies gain strategic advantages over competitors.
"You may gain an advantage with IT implementation," Carr said. "However, your competitors can see what you've done and replicate it."
Because of the work that vendors have done on making products interoperable and based on industry standards, it is possible for a business to quickly replicate the systems that rivals are implementing, he said.
"IT is integral to modern business practices and a prerequisite for survival," Carr acknowledged. But the role IT is playing in the age of open standards is akin to electricity or the water supply -- an infrastructure to manage, rather than a strategic, competitive tool, he added.
"These factors influence how success in IT is being viewed ... with the focus less on being creative with IT, but having more to do with simply managing it well," Carr said.
"Distinctive systems once provided competitive barriers," Carr said. As examples, he cited American Hospital Supply Corp.'s ASAP distribution system and Reuters Group PLC's Monitor business-tracking tool. The technology behind such cutting-edge systems used to be an effective barrier to emulation by rivals.
"But barriers have eroded as accessibility, affordability and standardization have increased," Carr said, arguing that the economies of scale standardized open systems provide outweigh the costs of the temporary advantages proprietary systems offer.
IT innovation now is restricted to two areas, Carr said. Companies can try to figure out ways of pushing to their suppliers the cost of being an innovator, in the way Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has told suppliers that they need to implement RFID tracking technology. IT can also be an architecture to support business models.
In response, Tapscott argued that IT can do more