Technology innovation, fuelled by advances in science as well as by inventors’ ingenuity in coming up with new tools and applications, continues to advance at a stunning pace.

Yet when it comes to harvesting the benefits of base technologies and of that stream of innovations, the picture is much less clear. Business management is often much less effective in gathering benefits than technology management in creating the potential for such benefits.

In our research at Cass Business School over more than two decades, we have become increasingly preoccupied with this gap. It is clear, from the hundreds of case studies that we have examined, that organisations are still not geared up to exploit the potential of IT. The term we have coined to summarise what is needed is “intelligent exploitation”, with the emphasis on people’s behaviour.

It is time to challenge the term IT strategy and emphasise “ICT strategy”, with the C for communication in both a technological and a human sense, fully integrated into strategic business thinking.

Investment in technology is often wasted. The whole process of design and implementation of systems is too frequently flawed, or applied inappropriately. The process needs to be considered over time, not just as meeting some specific one-off need. We summarise the need to apply coherent modern approaches to systems development as “effective systems”.

Much of the technology writing today focuses almost entirely on technologies and either accidentally or deliberately ignores the fundamental role of information and knowledge. The great irony of this is that the real benefits of IT rarely ­ if ever ­ come from the investment in the technology alone. They come from the way in which technology allows information and knowledge processes to be redesigned and reconfigured. So information and knowledge need to be put centre stage.

Some of the traditional ways of conceiving of roles and skills are insufficient to cope with the demands of an information and knowledge intensive society. We need to consider two parallel and overlapping clusters of roles. The first are those involved in the systems development process ­ designing and updating IT-based systems. The second cluster relates to cultivating and harvesting information and knowledge.

Our most recent work has been concerned with the “managerial mindsets”, particularly those relating to attitudes to change in particular and, crucially, the ability to think systemically. Intelligent exploiters need to commit to personal learning on an ongoing basis, because the world of technology is itself continually changing.

There are five areas which need to be addressed to allow intelligent exploitation. Strategic thinking needs to embrace communications as well as IT. The capability for implementing effective systems needs to be in place. There has to be a preoccupation with information and knowledge, as opposed to technology. The range of roles and skills needs to be addressed. And perhaps most urgently, managerial mindsets need to be extended.

Some organisations have over the years invested money, and even more importantly energy and attention, to all of these five components of the intelligent exploiter framework. But, overall, considerable shifts in emphasis are still needed if there is to be a closing of that capability gap between technology-led potential and everyday reality. CB

Clive Holtham is professor of information management and director of the Learning
Laboratory at Cass Business School