Information and the Modern Corporation  
James W. Cortada
MIT Press (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
While we have been preoccupied with the latest i-gadget from Apple and                 with Google's ongoing expansion, we may have missed something: the fundamental                 transformation of whole firms and industries into giant information-processing                 machines. Today, more than eighty percent of workers collect and analyze information                 (often in digital form) in the course of doing their jobs. This book offers a guide                 to the role of information in modern business, mapping the use of information within                 work processes and tracing flows of information across supply-chain management,                 product development, customer relations, and sales. The emphasis is on information                 itself, not on information technology. Information, overshadowed for a while by the                 glamour and novelty of IT, is the fundamental component of the modern corporation.                 In Information and the Modern Corporation, longtime IBM manager and consultant James                 Cortada clarifies the differences among data, facts, information, and knowledge and                 describes how the art of analytics has all but eliminated decision making based on                 gut feeling, replacing it with fact-based decisions. He describes the working style                 of "road warriors," whose offices are anywhere their laptops and cell                 phones are and whose deep knowledge of a given topic becomes their medium of                 exchange. Information is the core of the modern enterprise, and the use of                 information defines the activities of a firm. This essential guide shows managers                 and employees better ways to leverage information--by design and not by                 accident.