RESEARCHERS: Kenneth L. Kraemer, Sanjeev Dewan, Vijay Gurbaxani


This was a multi-year project, funded at over $1.5 million by IBM and the National Science Foundation, aimed at understanding the business value of Information Technology investments. The focus of this project was to understand the economic impact of IT on corporations, industries and the economy. This study used the multiple methodologies of case study analysis, surveys and statistical analysis to develop a rich understanding of how technology investments result in economic payoff. In addition, the researchers obtained and expanded an important database containing information technology indicators of the Fortune 1000 companies for the years 1987-1999.

The research began with reviews of prior work which integrated results from a comprehensive set of earlier studies conducted by all the leading researchers. The researchers then built a comprehensive conceptual model of how IT can create value for companies. Case studies of companies like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Cisco, Dell, E*Trade, Google and Schwab provided compelling detail on how innovative companies leveraged the technology. The statistical analysis showed conclusively that IT had a significant and positive impact on firm and industry-level productivity. The results of this research were published in top journals including MIS Quarterly, ACM Computing Surveys, Management Science, Communications of the ACM, and Information Systems Research.