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The MIT Press Essential Knowledge
Information and the Modern Corporation
A guide to information as the transformative tool of modern business. While we have been preoccupied with the latest i-gadget from Apple and with Google's ongoing expansion, we may have missed the fundamental transformation of whole firms and industries into giant information-processing machines. Today, more than eighty percent of workers collect and analyze information (often in digital form) in the course of doing their jobs. This book offers a guide to the role of information in modern business, mapping the use of information within work processes and tracing flows of information across supply-chain management, product development, customer relations, and sales. The emphasis is on information itself, not on information technology. Information, overshadowed for a while by the glamour and novelty of IT, is the fundamental component of the modern corporation. In Information and the Modern Corporation, longtime IBM manager and consultant James Cortada clarifies the differences among data, facts, information, and knowledge and describes how the art of analytics has all but eliminated decision making based on gut feeling, replacing it with fact-based decisions. He describes the working style of “road warriors,” whose offices are anywhere their laptops and cell phones are and whose deep knowledge of a given topic becomes their medium of exchange. Information is the core of the modern enterprise, and the use of information defines the activities of a firm. This essential guide shows managers and employees better ways to leverage information—by design and not by accident.
176 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
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About the author
James W. Cortada
77 books5 followersJames W. Cortada is the author of over two-dozen books on the history and use of information and computing in American society. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. He worked at IBM for thirty-eight years in sales, consulting, managerial, and research positions.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 6, 2019
Dry and dated.
March 25, 2012
James W. Cortada describes this short book as one that is “not graced with charts, graphs, numerous examples, case studies, and endnotes—information baubles—because it is not a monograph. Rather, it is an essay—an extended conversation—highlighting the role of information.” And it is an important and delightful conversation at that.
This essay, or extended conversation, highlights the growing role of information in our economy and society as a whole. It is about the “fundamental transformation of whole firms and industries into giant information-processing engines.” No matter what industry you work in, whether you realize it or not, whether you want it to be the case or not, you work for a “giant information-processing engine”. Banks, retail giants, restaurants, online retailers, the government, social networks, media companies- thanks to the advent of cheap computer processor chips, cloud computing making data storage cheaper, Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, the increased use of mobile smart phones, etc.- all have at their disposal seas and seas of data.
But as Mr. Cortada makes clear- data is not information nor is it knowledge. “Information is slightly different in that it combines various data to say something that the data alone can’t say.” And, “Knowledge is more complicated than data or information because it combines data, information, and experiences from logically connected groups of facts (such as budget data from a department) with things that have no direct or obvious connection (such as previous jobs and experiences).”
So while all corporations can more easily and cheaply acquire data in today’s world, this does not that they also automatically and necessarily convert that data into useful information and actionable knowledge.
And I suppose that that is precisely where books like this one come in. Mr. Cortada in this essay helps to provide the contextual background on how to begin to think about information in today’s economy. This essay is not an endpoint, but a launching pad for further inquiry into the role that data, information, and knowledge do, must, and will continue to play in the world’s information economy.
As Mr. Cortada notes, “If everyone in a company collects, stores, and uses information, then everyone in the company is, by definition, a manager of those assets.” In an information economy, we are all managers of information assets. Every person collects and stores such assets every day, and probably most times does so below a level of conscious awareness.
Regardless of how we acquire such assets, it is vital that everyone in an information economy see themselves as a manager, as someone who in the collecting and storing of data has a responsibility to efficiently convert that data into information, and then to do what so few people go on to do: apply the correct analytical questions and framework to the information so that it becomes knowledge.
This is the imperative of the information age that confronts us all. The benefits, particularly in a corporate setting, for those who are able to convert data all the way into knowledge will far outstrip those that are unable to do so. In this short book, Mr. Cortada makes this imperative- that “employees in the future…know how to collect information, work with it, and share it with organizations beyond the legal boundaries of their enterprise”- both obvious, and impossible to ignore.
This essay, or extended conversation, highlights the growing role of information in our economy and society as a whole. It is about the “fundamental transformation of whole firms and industries into giant information-processing engines.” No matter what industry you work in, whether you realize it or not, whether you want it to be the case or not, you work for a “giant information-processing engine”. Banks, retail giants, restaurants, online retailers, the government, social networks, media companies- thanks to the advent of cheap computer processor chips, cloud computing making data storage cheaper, Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, the increased use of mobile smart phones, etc.- all have at their disposal seas and seas of data.
But as Mr. Cortada makes clear- data is not information nor is it knowledge. “Information is slightly different in that it combines various data to say something that the data alone can’t say.” And, “Knowledge is more complicated than data or information because it combines data, information, and experiences from logically connected groups of facts (such as budget data from a department) with things that have no direct or obvious connection (such as previous jobs and experiences).”
So while all corporations can more easily and cheaply acquire data in today’s world, this does not that they also automatically and necessarily convert that data into useful information and actionable knowledge.
And I suppose that that is precisely where books like this one come in. Mr. Cortada in this essay helps to provide the contextual background on how to begin to think about information in today’s economy. This essay is not an endpoint, but a launching pad for further inquiry into the role that data, information, and knowledge do, must, and will continue to play in the world’s information economy.
As Mr. Cortada notes, “If everyone in a company collects, stores, and uses information, then everyone in the company is, by definition, a manager of those assets.” In an information economy, we are all managers of information assets. Every person collects and stores such assets every day, and probably most times does so below a level of conscious awareness.
Regardless of how we acquire such assets, it is vital that everyone in an information economy see themselves as a manager, as someone who in the collecting and storing of data has a responsibility to efficiently convert that data into information, and then to do what so few people go on to do: apply the correct analytical questions and framework to the information so that it becomes knowledge.
This is the imperative of the information age that confronts us all. The benefits, particularly in a corporate setting, for those who are able to convert data all the way into knowledge will far outstrip those that are unable to do so. In this short book, Mr. Cortada makes this imperative- that “employees in the future…know how to collect information, work with it, and share it with organizations beyond the legal boundaries of their enterprise”- both obvious, and impossible to ignore.
February 5, 2017
I found this really repetitive, but only because I've been immersed in this kind of thinking for years.
if you haven't given much thought to the integration of information processing into our economy, then this is a nice short thorough intro.
if you haven't given much thought to the integration of information processing into our economy, then this is a nice short thorough intro.
May 8, 2018
A good example of what the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series offers: A compact overview of information processing in organizations. With a focus on how the organization works and fulfills its purpose, it only covers as much IT as necessary. A good overview of current knowledge and a well-considered look into the near future of organizations.
May 19, 2017
An informative book, but one decidedly not meant for me as an reader.
June 22, 2018
Great topic, but I believe due to the book intentionally being short, that there was a lot of concepts that weren't thoroughly explained.
December 17, 2019
Too general, or probably I am too close to the Sun, as new perspective appears for me. Would definitely recommend it to non technical colleagues.
March 23, 2012
"Anecdotal evidence suggests that formal efforts to leverage tacit knowledge are few and far between." (25)
"The integrating of information is one of the newest technological frontiers." (48)
"We are now at a point where digital infrastructures can be seen as systems of systems -- ecosystems made up of processes, not only of hardware and software." (81)
"[T]he tacit ability to 'connect the dots' will be more of a developed, and essential, skill for future workers." (139)
"The integrating of information is one of the newest technological frontiers." (48)
"We are now at a point where digital infrastructures can be seen as systems of systems -- ecosystems made up of processes, not only of hardware and software." (81)
"[T]he tacit ability to 'connect the dots' will be more of a developed, and essential, skill for future workers." (139)
May 11, 2020
A short synopsis on corporations’ relationship with information as a crucial resource to growth.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews