REVEALING YOUR HAND: CAVEATS IN IMPLEMENTING DIGITAL BUSINESS STRATEGY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Grover, Varun; Kohli, Rajiv
• 署名单位: Clemson University; William & Mary
• 刊物名称: MIS QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0276-7783
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 655-662
• 关键词: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE; platform; systems

摘要

Digital business strategies (DBS) offer significant opportunities for firms to enhance competitiveness. Unlike the large proprietary systems of the 1980s, today's micro-applications allow firms to create and reconfigure digital capabilities to appropriate short-term competitive advantage. In the quest to provide value to customers through digitization, such applications can be efficiently deployed. However, we propose that in the long-term not all digitization is desirable. Indiscriminate digital initiatives through the use of micro-applications by a firm could reveal its hand to competitors and erode competitiveness. We propose that a firm's DBS must balance its system-software, process, and information-visibility with the ability to appropriate value from such systems. Through a visibility-value framework, and examples drawn from practice, this article illustrates the tradeoffs involved in making these choices as the firm traverses a dynamic business environment. In doing so, it raises sensitivity to an important caveat in digital environments epitomized by hyper-competition and transparency.