Information Technology and the Board of Directors

Richard  Nolan; F. Warren  McFarlan

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Article | Harvard Business Review | October 2005

Information Technology and the Board of Directors

by Richard Nolan and F. Warren McFarlan

Keywords: Information Technology; Governance;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Nolan, Richard, and F. Warren McFarlan. "Information Technology and the Board of Directors." Harvard Business Review 83, no. 10 (October 2005).

About the Authors

Richard L. Nolan

William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus

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F. Warren McFarlan

T.J. Dermot Dunphy Baker Foundation Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus

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Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

The Creative Consulting Company

Robert S. Kaplan, Richard Nolan and David P. Norton

During the past 50 years, several consulting companies introduced important new ideas that extended management theory and improved management practice. This paper draws upon public sources and the authors’ personal experiences to describe how three management consulting companies created and sustained several big management ideas. The consulting organizations identified companies that had introduced an innovation to address a practice gap or anomaly. It then described the innovation in articles, cases, and public conferences and proceeded to help a new set of companies implement the management innovation, which led to enhancements in the original innovation that made it more understandable, generalizable, and robust. The consulting leaders sustained their thought-leadership positions by creating an ecosystem with senior executives at pioneer corporations and academic/thought leaders. The paper also describes how other consulting companies did not sustain an initial thought-leadership position because of a failure to recognize the synergistic interplay between knowledge application and knowledge creation.

Keywords: Management; Theory; Practice; Performance Improvement; Innovation and Management; Consulting Industry;

Citation:
Kaplan, Robert S., Richard Nolan, and David P. Norton. "The Creative Consulting Company." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-001, July 2018. View Details

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Technical Note | HBS Case Collection | June 2017

Issues in Non-Profit Governance

F. Warren McFarlan

Non-profit governance at its core is very different from for-profit governance. Certain aspects of non-profit governance are widely pervasive across all non-profits, while all others are idiosyncratic to specific sub-groups of non-profits. After identifying these commonalities, this paper focuses on specific factors which make non-profit governance particularly nuanced and complicated in specific situations.

Keywords: Governance; Nonprofit Organizations;

Citation:
McFarlan, F. Warren. "Issues in Non-Profit Governance." Harvard Business School Technical Note 917-413, June 2017. View Details

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Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2016

Big History, Global Corporations, Virtual Capitalism

Richard L. Nolan

Homo sapiens has mastered its environment so thoroughly that, for the first time in history, a small minority of the population is capable of creating enough food and fuels to support not only itself, but also a growing majority of the 6 billion people now living on earth. This unparalleled abundance is allowing our species to develop, distribute, and profit from innovation in nearly every corner of civilization. Now key elements of the modern world such as the speed and connectedness of digital communication, the dynamic movement of capital, and the changing nature of political boundaries are propelling capitalism into a new form that can be characterized as "virtual capitalism." And global corporations in their size and global influence are leading the embodiment of virtual capitalism into the modern world.

Keywords: Economic Systems; Internet; Innovation and Invention; United States;

Citation:
Nolan, Richard L. "Big History, Global Corporations, Virtual Capitalism." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 16-116, March 2016. (Revised October 2016.) View Details

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Information Technology and the Board of Directors

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