Drucker on the history of printing and information technology

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Moving past the era of Technology and into the era of Information

The prolific management writer/thinker/contrarian Peter Drucker died last week, and there were plenty of online commentaries to read over the weekend. One of the best was <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=61">a post by Phil Wainewright where he quotes Drucker comparing the history of printing to our current information technology evolution.</a> Fascinating, the parallels are well drawn. Printing gave way, quite quickly, to publishing. The technical part became a craft, still done today, while the information you published became paramount. Information Technology travels this same road today. On-demand, web based applications, from Accounting and Inventory to CRM and Logistics/Supply Chain are going to move us from an IT landscape dominated by technicians, to a world where Information is paramount and the technology is largely hidden from view. There is no longer a competitive advantage to having your own IT Department. To the contrary, what you really have is rapacious cost center that erects barriers between you and your business. The more IT 'Stuff' they manage and control, the greater their job security and the higher the walls that separate Finance from Operations from Sales from Customer Service, etc.. One of my favorite quotes from Drucker is "Results in business come from exploiting opportunities, not from solving problems. All one can hope to get by solving problems is to restore normality. The pertinent question is not how to do things right, but to find the right things and concentrate the resources and efforts on them."We have spent a lot time and effort trying to solve all of the business' problems with technology. We have succeeded in some areas and failed in others. But along the way we have come to realize that people and process are more important than the technology. People need information, not technology, to exploit opportunity. 9 application/xml false information technology peter drucker web based accounting web based applicatons web based crm Drucker on the history of printing and information technology A great parallel http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=61 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 69.218.156.212 69.218.156.212 tfoydel false true false false true 102302 blog blogsite/SightLines/web