Tapscott: Do Your Best, Partner the Rest

ACM: Ubiquity interview with Don Tapscott: “The important issue is not how much you spend on technology but how you harness the power of technology to execute a business strategy and new business designs. That’s the core of the argument. My view is that the corporation is going through the biggest change in its architecture in a century and that vertically integrated corporations are unbundling and becoming focused corporations that work within broader networks or business webs and that we’re in the very early days of this change. It’s happening on a global scale as the tonic of the marketplace globally is being brought to bear on every business function within a corporation. The reason is that the Internet drops transaction, interaction and partnering costs…When it comes to organizations, I’m not talking about decentralization or centralization. I’m talking about vertical integration or not. You can be a highly centralized company that’s not vertically integrated. There is no yo-yo on this one. The trend for the last 50 years is crystal clear and one way towards unbundling. It has accelerated hugely in the last decade because the Internet drops transaction, interaction and partnering costs between firms. Companies can now focus on what they do best, partner to do the rest. Focused companies working in business webs perform better. This will continue for decades, as companies go through the process of defining what’s core to them, finding the cluster of activities where they can differentiate, create barriers to entry, and so on. The big, controversial change is this is now happening on a global basis. It’s not just manufacturing or clerical work. It’s many different categories of knowledge work.”