Competing On Information

Competing on informationbeyond the dominance of structuresNolan, Nortan & CoGer A. Damen, Jeroen Dubel and Hans Strikwerda (eds.)The paradox of the information economy is that most firms manage their information as if a residual factor in their business model, whereas information is a key resource. At the start of the modern business enterprise at the beginning of the twentieth century, its great organizers Henry Fayol, the cousins DuPont and Alfred Sloan, were very much aware that they themselves had to manage the information of the firm. They did so through structures. Paradoxically the immense growth of information technology has made us forget that the role of structure not only is to define positions and to create focus, structure also serves to organize information.