Information Systems: A Manager's Guide To Harnessing Technology

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Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology is intended for use in undergraduate and/or graduate courses in Management Information Systems and Information Technology.

One of BusinessWeek’s "Professors of the Year", John Gallaugher of Boston College, brings you a brand new Management Information Systems textbook that teaches students how he or she will experience IS from a Managers perspective first hand through interesting coverage and bleeding-edge cases.

Get involved with John's community by visiting and subscribing to his blog, The Week In Geek, where courseware, technology and strategy intersect and joining his Ning IT Community site where you can get more resources to teach Information Systems.

Shockingly, at a time when technology regularly appears on the cover of every major business publication, students find IS among the least appealing of management disciplines.

The teaching approach in Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology can change this. The text offers a proven approach that has garnered student praise, increased IS enrollment, and engaged students to think deeper and more practically about the space where business and technology meet. Every topic is related to specific business examples, so students gain an immediate appreciation of its importance. Rather than lead with technical topics, the book starts with strategic thinking, focusing on big-picture issues that have confounded experts but will engage students. And while chapters introduce concepts, cases on approachable, exciting firms across industries further challenge students to apply what they've learned, asking questions like:

Why was NetFlix able to repel Blockbuster and WalMart? How did Harrah's Casino's become twice as profitable as comparably-sized Caesar's, enabling the former to acquire the latter? How does Spain's fashion giant Zara, a firm that shuns the sort of offshore manufacturing used by every other popular clothing chain, offer cheap fashions that fly off the shelves, all while achieving growth rates and profit margins that put Gap to shame? What's an IPO and can a technology alternative push out investment bankers and insiders to the benefit of entrepreneurs and small investors? Why is Google more profitable than Disney? Is Facebook really worth $15 billion?

The Information Systems course and discipline have never seemed more relevant, more interesting, and more exciting. Gallaugher's textbook can help teachers make students understand why.

• Chapter 1: Zara: Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems
• Chapter 2: Strategy and Technology
• Chapter 3: Netflix: David Becomes Goliath
• Chapter 4: Moore’s Law and More: Fast, Cheap Computing and What It Means for the Manager
• Chapter 5: Understanding Network Effects
• Chapter 6: Peer Production, Social Media, and Web 2.0
• Chapter 7: Facebook: Building a Business from the Social Graph
• Chapter 8: Google: Search, Online Advertising, and Beyond…
• Chapter 9: Understanding Software: A Primer for Managers
• Chapter 10: Software in Flux: Partly Cloudy and Sometimes Free
• Chapter 11: The Data Asset: Databases, Business Intelligence, and Competitive Advantage