Issues and opinions—information technologies in business: A blueprint for education and research

How are business schools thinking about developing leaders for the emerging digital economy? Is there a set of core principles we can apply to thinking about the enabling potential of information technologies and their consequences for business and society? We present a business–centric framework and a technology–centric framework that together form a blueprint for answering these questions. The business–centric framework articulates three compelling reasons why information technology (IT) matters in business: (1) IT continually transforms industry and society, (2) executive decisions about IT investments, governance, and strategy are critical to organizational success, and (3) deriving value from increasingly available data trails defines effective decision making in the digital economy. However, our conversations with the leadership of 45 business schools and our subsequent data indicate that business schools are challenged by effectively training future executives to think about these reasons and act on them as part of a forward–looking program of business education that is grounded in stable concepts.