It creates competitive advantage by giving companies new ways to outperform their rivals.
It spawns whole new businesses, often from within a company's existing operations.
We discuss the reasons why information technology has acquired strategic significance and how it is affecting all businesses. We then describe how the new technology changes the nature of competition and how astute companies have exploited this. Finally, we outline a procedure managers can use to assess the role of information technology in their business and to help define investment priorities to turn the technology to their competitive advantage.