Steelscreen.com: Why it is not Everywhere in B2B and the Role of the CEO in ‘it’

Abstract

This case is intended to serve as the basis for one or two sessions of an introductory Information Technology course at an MBA program or for one session at a senior executive program. The aim is to address what needs to be known by general managers in terms of technology and at the same time serve as an introduction for those who want to deepen their knowledge in business-to-business (B2B) technologies. Thus, it is intended to cover basic technology principles and concepts essential for any CEO/MBA. It also covers key business concepts that are impacted by information technology such as industry convergence and B2B. The approach we suggest be taken with this case is an integrative one where both technology and business concepts are intermingled throughout the class discussion. An essential ingredient of this approach is to provide a business rational for why technology matters - using this case in the first session before drilling-down into the more specific technology details of XML and metadata in a possible second session. We have worked on other cases to extend this approach to a full-scale introductory MBA/senior executive class. There are two unique features of this approach. First, it is neither technology centric nor business centric. Instead, it links executive decisions with solid information technology fundamentals. Second, our approach would be concise not requiring more than 200 pages of core case material for a full 25-session course. We believe this is an important feature because MBA-style audience base does not go into a CIO career path most of the times and will therefore not be able to afford the amount of time a longer approach would require.