Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations

During my internship at Boise State University I worked with a fellow student that was everything geek. He played D&D regularly, had an amazing amount of knowledge about everything IT, was up on all the latest versions of Linux, and could implement nearly anything thrown at him. While everyone working there, especially our boss, admired him there was tricky part of working with him: he loved to implement new stuff for the sake that it was cutting edge. Often we were at odds over this, we were from two different worlds, techie and business. He was looking at what the technology could do and I was running a cost-benefit analysis. 


In the March of 2010 volume of MIS Quarterly Ping Wang investigates companies that are always after the hottest technology and those that still have an ENIAC in the basement. Ping approached this study by using information published and annual IT budgets for 109 large comapnies. With this information he found that companies that invest in the next hottest thing in IT don't necessarily perform better; however, they do gain stronger reputation and executive compensation in the short term. 


As Ping mentions in his research, this can mean different things depending on the company. If you are following the newest IT trends and seeing poor performance, perhaps you should scale back a bit. On the other hand, this also means that if your company's IT department is viewed as a house full of dinosaur tamers, perhaps following some of the newest IT trends might improve your image. As the author suggest, a balance between the two extremes is the best choice.

Citations: 
Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations
MIS Quarterly Vol. 34 No. 1, p. 63-85
University of Denver link to study
Ping Wang (University of Maryland at College Park)