To the Question "Does IT Matter?" Hollywood Answers "Yes"

To the Question "Does IT Matter?" Hollywood Answers "Yes"
Author(s): Wang, Wenli and Cook, David A.
Year: 2005
Paper Number: GBS-DIA-2005-007
Goizueta Department: Decision and Information Analysis

Abstract

Nicholas Carr's question "Does IT Matter?"(to the maintenance of competitive advantage) has been applied to many industries but the one that depends on IT almost exclusively to fabricate its product-motion pictures. In an effort to test Carr's hypothesis, we offer case studies of three distinct periods of technological innovation when the film business was in three different states of industrial organization - the coming of sound, the conversion to widescreen, and the advent of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) - and conclude that Carr's ideas are applicable in some cases but not in others because the film industry is structurally and technologically unique.