Requirement: Final Research Paper
This individual research paper is your final examination for this course. The topics of the research paper must be approved by Professor by Session 5. Students should email Professor with a paragraph outline of the intended focus of their research paper. Completed research papers should be 6-8 single spaced pages.
Information about the course:
Session 1: Business Strategy, Process, Innovation and Information Technology
Session 2: IT-enabled Product and Service Innovation
Session 3: Understanding Process Analysis and Innovation
Session 4: IT-enabled Innovations in Customer Facing Processes
Session 5: Justification and Evaluation of IT-based Innovation projects
Background
Over the past 60 years, significant advances in Information and Communications
Technology (ICT – typically abbreviated in the US to ―IT‖) have allowed business
organizations to develop increasingly sophisticated information systems (IS). IT has
moved far beyond the support and automation of back office clerical operations to the
foreground of being a key enabler of business processes, and an essential platform for
enabling innovations in business strategy, processes, products and services. Today,
almost every business process in most industries is enabled by, and often dependent
upon, contemporary information and communications technologies.
However, as was discussed in ISTM 603, while contemporary IT offers significant
potential value, actual realization of this value has been elusive for many firms.
Effective use of IT that is consistent with the intended business benefits plays a critical
role in realizing the potential value that IT offers for business innovation. Unfortunately,
effective use of IT is fraught with risks and challenges. Over 50% of IT implementations
in business contexts fail to deliver their anticipated business benefits.
Consequently, a firm‘s ability to identify potential value-adding IT-enabled strategic
and operational innovations, design the processes and/or products/services to embody
these potential innovations, and more importantly to successfully deploy and implement
these innovations to bring about effective adoption and use that leads to the realization
of the intended business impacts have become key enablers of business innovation and
competitive differentiation. The pervasiveness of IT within business enterprises, and their
strategic and operational dependency upon IT, places the PRIMARY responsibility for
managing IT-enabled business innovation with business executives, not with IT
professionals.
For IT professionals, there are growing indications that the critical ―in-house‖ IT
competencies and capabilities needed by firms are changing in the context of offshore IT
development, cloud-based IT services, and third-party technical support. Consequently,
there is an increased need for IT professionals who have a clear understanding of the
information and business needs for IT-based systems, and how to partner with business
executives to bring about the adoption and use of these systems.
