The I-95 Coalition

Last week we talked about how Michael Carr left much to be desired in his article about how IT not giving much of competitive edge in the market place. This week I want to give a bit of information about the 95 coalition.

Interstate 95 runs the entire span of the US east coast and crosses through many jurisdictions. It is the most heavily traveled corridor in the US and plays a large part in the economy. One of the most difficult problems with this corridor is raising the necessary capital needed to do things such as allow double stacked freight cars to travel from one end of the corridor to the other or eliminate bottle neck regions. This is difficult because the the corridor spans so many different counties that have their own separate regulations and budgets. Thus, it is hard for one county to spend money fixing something that only benefits another county in another state. To solve this, alliances must be made in order to forms bounds and find common incentives among parties. The 95 coalition seeks to do this through many different means. Policy specialists and transportation personnel would benefit from the knowledge of this entity.

Please see the link to see the 95 coalition website: http://www.i95coalition.org/i95/Home/I95CorridorFacts/tabid/173/Default.aspx

Why Nicholas Carr doesn't seem to Know Much

In his article IT Doesn't Matter Carr argues that companies invest too much into IT under the impression that it will give them a competitive advantage in the market place all the while not realizing that nearly all advantages IT would have offered have come and gone and companies must be much more conservative in their IT expenditures.

While I believe businesses characterize themselves this way to the public, I don't see this reality actually playing out anywhere. We always here about the advances in computers and every company I see advertises about some high tech system that gets "me", the customer, an added benefit. ADT Home Security tells me about a more high tech system than the one they sold a decade ago, I know that's part of their sales pitch. It's the same system my parents used. The door opens and guess what... the alarm goes off.

There is a reason why no one from Home Depot uses a"segway" to roll around on and why I was never issued a "Palm" when I worked as a Pharma rep years ago. Companies are very prudent and they tend to only invest in technology that will have bankable returns. Not only do few if any offices hand out I-pads to their employees, but most of them still keep a typewriter on the shelf and frequently make use of their fax machines. Most of the companies I've worked for invest most of their money by way of the people that work for them and most of that goes to sales, marketing, management and healthcare. Organizations are most concerned with efficiency and will only invest in IT so much as they believe it will help them more of it. For instance, Home Depot's computers will tell them when to increase and decrease the prices of their products based on supply and demand in real time. This makes them more adaptive to the market. They don't seem to invest in technology for the sake of being more high tech in hopes of gaining an advantage of some kind as Carr would suggest.

Whether a company invests more tech dollars seems to depend upon the nature of their market, their organizational structure and the company's access to different applications. While I will agree with Carr that every once and a while their is someone in a tech department who is a bit too eager and some how succeeds in persuading the boss into investing in a neat, but useless piece of equipment such as a projector that allows one to edit the screen with the use of a high tech maker, by in large, too much tech investment does not seem to be as much of an issue as the author claims it to be.