May 4, 2007I mentioned to some of you on Wednesday that I had started to have computer problems. I am now up and running at about 95% efficiency on a new computer, so I can finally send and receive emails and I can update the website. Thank you to everyone for your flexibility and your preparation for our Sanmina-SCI tour. Our hosts were impressed by the caliber of questions and the quality of discussions. I hope you feel that it was a worthwhile educational experience, and that it will help you in your quest to become masters of business administration. If you have thoughts you would like to share about the tour, including suggestions for improvement, please share them with me. I am interested to hear your thoughts about this plant's role in the Era of Convergence, and how the huge trends that we have discussed appear to be impacting their business. April 27, 2007Someone wrote me an email with a question about the assignments for this week, and I suspect that others are wondering the same thing: Question: Are all four papers postponed or just the article summaries? Answer: All four papers are postponed. You do not need to hand anything in this week. Next week, May 9th, you will hand in the two article summaries for LP 5, along with at least one biography and one company profile.
Suggestion #1: I would like you to research Sanmina-SCI and Control Data Corp to prepare for our tour. You may find it to your advantage to write profiles for those companies now, while the information is fresh in your mind. If so, you can turn in the profiles at any time and they will count toward your total of ten company profiles for the entire quarter. Suggestion #2: You may also want to research Gordon Moore, Seymour Cray, and Jack Kilby. All three have had a significant impact on the evolution of this facility. As with the companies, you are welcome to use your research to write biographies of these three people. You can turn them in at your leisure, and they will count toward your requirement for a total of ten biographies. April 25, 2007* * * IMPORTANT - ACTION REQUIRED * * * This evening I received an email from Sanmina-SCI. As I mentioned, I have been hoping to arrange a tour of their plant for our class. They have asked if we can come next week on Wednesday, May 2nd. After completing the High Performance Community Index, I hope that you understand why I feel that we need to take advantage of this opportunity. So I need your help. First, I need you to be understanding of the fact that I am going to rearrange some things in our class in order to make this work. Second, I need you to confirm that you got this message by sending me an email, and then keep checking in at the website to see if anything has changed. They have asked us to meet at the north door, behind the Sanmina-SCI plant, at 7:30 PM. The plant is at 222 Disk Drive, just west of the Rushmore Mall. Disk Drive is the street that runs parallel to I-90, in front of the Rushmore Mall, between Haines Avenue and Lacrosse Street. We will be guests in their workplace, so I would encourage you to arrive early and dress in professional attire. I would like you to do a bit of research on Sanmina-SCI and Control Data Corporation before Wednesday. Their clients also include many of the companies on our list, including Hewlett Packard and Motorola. You are welcome to use your research to write company profiles for any of these companies. Your papers for "LP5: The Internet" will not be due until the following class on May 9th. Since you will not have article summaries due this week, it may be a good opportunity for you to complete the first draft of your book summary. If you have any questions or concerns about participating in this tour, please share them with me as soon as possible. April 11, 2007Thank you for the spirited discussion tonight about information technology and the strategic issues related to managing people and computers. I recently did a presentation for the Pinnacle Group where I talked about the Information Value Chain, and the Four Periods of the Era of Convergence. This presentation ties them both together in a way that is a bit different than how I presented them in class. You will need to have PowerPoint in order to open this file. If you are interested in learning more about personal computer history, you may enjoy browsing through the DigiBarn website. For the record, my first computer was a Commodore 64 that we got, I think, when I was in junior high. Prior to that I had worked with Apple IIs at school. April 10, 2007In the last few years, the Black Hills region was chosen as a beta site by the National Network for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization. From their website (www.n2tec.org): N2TEC began as a National Science Foundation Partners-for-Innovation Project led by the University of Southern California with the purpose of raising the level of innovation and technology commercialization in the U.S. Our mission is to bring the wealth creation process to areas of the U.S. that have not benefited from technology entrepreneurship. Using our High Performance Regional Model and tapping more than 20 university and industry partners, we are serving the needs of rural and underserved regions.
Bill Griffin and I first met at a meeting for N2TEC. One of the other brilliant people that I have met through this program is Dr. Timothy Stearns from the University of California, Fresno. His department, The Lyles Center, publishes a great newsletter that talks about technology, business, and entrepreneurship. You can read it here (E+Action Newsletter) and if you like it then you can subscribe and they will send it to you for free. I stumbled across a really interesting website tonight: www.indeed.com. It is a search engine for jobs, but it also aggregates data into useful information about the job market. For instance, here is a breakdown of salaries vs. education for Rapid City, and for the U.S. as a whole. I was surprised by two things. The first is that MBA jobs pay 10-20% more than PhD jobs. Second, that national salary averages for equivalent education are almost double the salaries in our area. 
April 9, 2007While watching TV this afternoon, I saw a colleague of mine being interviewed on CNBC's Power Lunch. Ron Hira is the author of one of the books on our list: Outsourcing America. If you find the subject of this interview (click here to read) interesting, then I recommend that you consider Outsourcing America as an option for your book review assignment. Ron studied Electrical Engineering, and then went to work for the IEEE. He developed an interest in the issue of outsourcing and off-shoring of technical jobs, particularly to India and China. Once he got his Ph.D. from George Mason University, he became the voice of dissent against off-shoring. I see him quoted in the news a few times each year, and he is often asked to testify before the U.S. Congress. Because he is both an engineer and is of Indian descent, Ron has a unique perspective on the issue of foreign technical labor. I am careful about agreeing with Ron, because I generally feel that he is overly protectionist, but I do give him credit for being well-read and being able to defend his opinions with credible evidence. And I am grateful to him for challenging me and helping me develop a better understanding of U.S. public policy. This is an issue that is relevant to information technology strategy, because many domestic businesses are now having to make critical immigration and off-shoring related decisions when hiring technical professionals. April 8, 2007In class last week we discussed the Four Periods (so far) in the Era of Convergence. Those responsible for creating and implementing corporate strategy in any company should have been looking around during the entire time and asking themselves "what is missing now" so that they could identify and prepare for the next period. I said that they should also have been thinking about the major conflicts that we discussed, and how they would effect the emergence of the next period. One of these conflicts was the battle between "standards-based" technologies and "proprietary" technologies. Also remember that one of the things we discussed would happen in the years ahead is the expiration of millions of patents that "protect" intellectual property. A fascinating innovation that has emerged during the Business Process Period is the creation of a new telephone company, Vonage, using a technology called Voice Over IP (VOIP). We will discuss the technology behind this company in greater detail when we get to LP5: The Internet. In simple terms, Vonage routes telephone calls over the Internet, and can therefore provide their service for a fraction of what traditional phone companies and cellular phone companies charge. Vonage is on the list of companies about which you are encouraged to write a paper, as is Verizon Communications. In the news we just learned that Verizon has won a court case that claimed Vonage was infringing on their intellectual property. Vonage has said that they will appeal the ruling, but for now the judge has ordered Vonage to not sign up any new customers. This case is a wonderful illustration of how our society, our justice system, and our economy are struggling with information technology at a strategic level. A similar battle a few years ago nearly decimated a music-sharing service called Napster. Here are some important strategic questions that emerge from this case. Isn't it good for our economy to encourage innovative businesses like Vonage to leverage new technology in a way that provides services at a lower cost? If you allow Verizon to protect their intellectual property, aren't you really denying the rest of our economy the opportunity to benefit from their innovations? If you do not let Verizon protect their intellectual property, what incentive exists to encourage companies to fund research and development? If you prevent Vonage from providing this service by enforcing U.S. laws, aren't you really opening the door for a competitor to set up shop in a country with more liberal intellectual property laws and provide exactly the same service to U.S. customers?
By the time you are done with this class, you will be much better prepared to discuss these complex and important issues than are many of the people who write and enforce our laws today. April 5, 2007Last night we talked about Intel's Gordon Moore, and I listed Moore's Law as one of the four huge trends that I think strategic thinkers need to understand. Moore's Law originated as an observation that he made in an article in Electronics Magazine in 1965. You can read the original article here. In simple terms, Moore's Law states that the power of computer hardware doubles every 18-24 months. This has been more-or-less true since that article was published over forty years ago. To put this in terms of money, let's say that you placed one dollar into an investment that would double every 24 months. In 40 years it would grow to over $1,000,000. That's an ROI of greater than 40% every year! This trend in information technology is credited with increasing the productivity of workers in our economy, and with maintaining the momentum of our global economic expansion. Hence, I believe that the threat posed by the laws of physics to the continued validity of Moore's Law should be a significant strategic concern for us all. If our country makes the right investments in research, then we may be able to maintain our position as a driver of technology innovation. If we do not - or cannot - make those investments, then we will almost certainly lose our position to the countries that can and do. Right now, I think there are several countries standing ready to take the lead if we let them. At the top of the list are India, China, Japan, and South Korea. April 4, 2007I hope that you enjoyed our discussion tonight, and that you are excited about the journey that we are about to take together. This class should be fun, but it should also help you to appreciate the ways in which information technology is transforming our world. If you are interested in pursuing this further, here are links to a handful of companies that I think illustrate the power of the Era of Convergence in general, and the Business Process Period in particular. March 23, 2007Dear Students, Welcome to Information Technology for Strategic Advantage. This course looks at the evolution and application of information technology from a strategic perspective. We hope it will help you to become a more effective manager. I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself, and why I love teaching this class. In my first computer job, back in 1991, I worked for $100 a week answering phones for a former Wang employee who was building a new business around his training as a Certified Netware Engineer. That job was supposed to help me pay my way through school to become a civil engineer. Instead it launched me down a whole new path, and I have spent my professional career as an information technology integrator. In my academic life I have studied engineering, education, business, and information technology. I have a B.S. in Workforce Education and Development from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, an M.S. in Technology for Education and Training from the University of South Dakota and, most recently, an M.B.A. from National American University. I am currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the School of Mines. Professionally I have collected a number of industry certifications, mostly from Microsoft. These include Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Office Specialist Expert, Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor, and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. I have managed teams that worked on Internet technologies, database development, applications development, applications deployment, and network design. From 1994 until 1999 I was a Yeoman in the U.S. Navy, and was in charge of many of the administrative functions of an F/A-18 squadron. I have also, at various times, worked in research laboratories and studied engineering public policy. I spent the summer of 2001 in Washington, D.C. on an internship funded by the National Science Foundation to study the public policy issues surrounding the proposal to convert the Homestake Mine into an underground laboratory. From 2002 until 2003 I was the Information Technologies Division Manager for a global technical services firm that does research for many U.S. and foreign government agencies and corporations. I spent much of 2003 and 2004 as a laboratory assistant in the Friction Stir Welding Laboratory of the Advanced Materials Processing Center at the School of Mines. In 2005 I was hired by the State of South Dakota to help develop an index for High Performance Campuses. As a technical trainer, I have had exciting opportunities to work with all kinds of organizations to help them understand how to use technology to improve their workflow and expand their capabilities. A few of the organizations that I’ve done information technology consulting and training for that you might recognize include: RESPEC Inc, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, Microsoft, Navajo Nation, IMC Global, Regal Computer, Hills Products Group, South Dakota School of Mines, and Rushmore Borglum Story Museum. My current interests run in the direction of the impact that information technology has on business and society. I am writing a book with the working title of Era of Convergence that covers much of the same material that we will discuss in this class. I speak regularly to groups of all sizes about the evolution of information technology, how it is impacting global business, and how to use it effectively. And I work as a consultant, often managing technology deployments and company startups. I have my own company called “Real South Dakota,” and I am starting a U.S. office for another technical services company called “Denhi.” As for my personal life, many of you have already had the pleasure of meeting my lovely wife, Ruth, who is also a student in the M.B.A. program. We will celebrate our third anniversary this summer. I genuinely believe that the greatest financial opportunities for many years to come will be presented to people who have a strategic perspective on technology and a global perspective on business. That does not mean that every manager needs to understand the intricacies of any one computer program; rather, it means that they need to be able to look at a new technology and recognize the impact that it can have on their business processes. My goal for this class is to help each of you hone your skills in this regard. Our first class will meet on Wednesday, April 4. We will meet for 11 weeks. We will meet for two hours per night, from 7:30 to 9:20 pm. I will post a syllabus for this class on the Internet at www.danielstanton.com/CI6400, and I’ll use this site for posting assignments and other useful links. You will find the syllabus attached. Please read the syllabus, explore the website, and complete the assignments for Week 1 before our first class. If you have any questions about these materials, please send me an email or ask them during the first class. Sincerely, Daniel | 
