In 2024, MIT CISR proudly celebrates its 50-year legacy. Throughout this year, we will be collecting and sharing memories and milestones from MIT CISR's history of practice-based research and industry collaboration on this webpage.
If you have memories to share, feel free to contact us at cisr@mit.edu.
MIT CISR began a series of 2½-day seminars in March 1978, dubbed the “Endicott House Seminars” after the conference center where they were held, a former estate donated to MIT by the Endicott family in the 1950s. The seminars, held twice a year, played an important role in fostering collaboration between MIT CISR researchers and sponsor organizations. Each event focused on a specific IT management topic and featured short presentations by sponsors, MIT CISR researchers, outside experts, and much discussion. The gracious ambience of the mansion was perfect for frank and lively conversations—often late into the evening. The seminars became integral to generating ideas and insights for CISR research and gave root to the peer-to-peer learning during events and collegial relationships among members that have become a hallmark of MIT CISR.
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Stephanie Woerner became director of MIT CISR and MIT Principal Research Scientist in July 2022, and she is leading our transformation to MIT CISR 3.0. Stephanie joined MIT CISR in 2007, and she and Peter Weill have formed an enduring, productive research collaboration. They have coauthored two books and many articles in Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review and other publications, on topics like digital business models, pathways to Future Ready, and domains, among others.
Stephanie is passionate about understanding—through evidence-based research—how organizations create new business value from technology. She works to effectively communicate these and other research findings to MIT CISR members. She edits many of the 3-page research briefings (distributed to almost 23,000 business leaders monthly), helps authors synthesize the actionable items into the one-page Talking Points, and enjoys designing event and workshop agendas. Stephanie is also an in-demand presenter for senior executive teams.
Stephanie still loves to get her hands on a new data set and analyze it to help understand how top performing firms manage technology. Peter says, “Stephanie is the best data analyst I know. Her ability to tease out practical insights for business leaders from complex data is world class.”
• Learn more about CISR 3.0.
• Read about digital business models.
• Read about Future Ready.
• Read the SMR article.
• Read the HBR article.
• Read the MIT CISR publication on domains.
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Produced by the MIT Sloan School, with sponsorship from EDS and distribution by the Forbes Initiative, the videotapes and accompanying Leader’s Guide were aimed at senior executives seeking guidance into how to realize the maximum return from their IT investments. The series featured first-hand success stories from CEOs and CIOs from seven major enterprises, including Johnson & Johnson, JCPenney, and Xerox, and insights from Sloan faculty, including Stuart Madnick, Thomas Malone, Peter Senge, and Lester Thurow.
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MIT CISR is affiliated with MIT Sloan School's IT Group and MIT CISR directors taught in the MIT Sloan MBA program from the mid-1970s until the 2017. Jack Rockart taught a popular MBA course, “Management of the IS Function” for many years. Peter Weill taught two MBA courses, “Generating Business Value from IT” and “e-Business Models,” a course based on his and Michael Vitale’s book, Place to Space: Migrating to e-Business Models, from 2000 to the early 2010s. He received the Sloan “Excellence in Teaching Award” for the 2006–2007 academic year. Jeanne Ross continued teaching a course based on MIT CISR research after Peter and then in 2015 transformed the course into an Action Learning program. “Enterprise Transformations in the Digital Economy (T-Lab)” used MIT CISR cases and brought in CIOs from MIT CISR sponsor companies to talk about digital business transformation. In addition, T-Lab successfully matched teams of Sloan students with MIT CISR member companies to work on a specific digital management issue the firms were attempting to address.
• Read about the MIT Sloan IT Group
• See more about the Place to Space book
• Read more about Action Learning at MIT Sloan
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Chris Foglia joined MIT CISR in 1993, making her CISR's longest tenured employee. Every CISR member, guest, and researcher has been a beneficiary of Chris’s willingness to try new things and her insistence that CISR pursue excellence not only in research but in delivery.
Chris started her career at MIT at the Medical Department followed by seven years with the MIT Alumni Association, during which she learned her way around MIT. This was later proven useful, as MIT CISR sought both to contribute to MIT’s mission and to leverage the vast resources of MIT to serve our members. And, when Peter Weill announced his intentions to globalize CISR in 2000, Chris proved to be the perfect operating officer to bring his vision to fruition.
Chris was prescient about the need for quality data to run CISR. She has been zealous in maintaining CISR's records and in establishing systems and platforms to ensure that CISR operates like a well-oiled machine. CISR’s systems are the envy of many other research centers, and Chris and the administrative team are often asked to demo them for groups across campus. She has mastered the art of finding venues, food, and group activities in every global city that hosts a CISR event and Chris is THE person who ensures every sponsor is treated with respect and care, every researcher has the resources needed to run their projects, and every event runs as smoothly as possible. In 2008, in recognition of her extraordinary leadership and creativity, Chris was named Associate Director of MIT CISR. She continues to manage many of CISR's operations and to host extraordinary sponsor and team events. In fact, if Chris invites you to a celebration, be sure to attend—you won’t want to miss it.
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One research interest Peter Weill brought to MIT CISR was a passion for IT Governance. In Research Briefing Vol. 1, No. 2B, "Effective IT Governance," he and researcher Richard Woodham defined IT governance as the specification of decision rights and an accountability framework that encourages desirable behavior in the use of IT. The briefing laid out a set of business objectives, IT governance styles and business performance goals with accompanying behaviors, mechanisms and metrics. Peter and his collaborators found firms with superior IT governance had higher profits than firms with poor IT governance. In 2004, Peter and Jeanne Ross described the MIT CISR IT governance framework, the types of IT decisions and who should be involved in those decisions in their book, IT Governance, which has been influential in both academia (with over 3600 citations) and business. As IT (and now digital) decisions are of ever-increasing importance to enterprise performance, this research has continued to help enterprises get true value from their IT and digital investments.
• See more about the IT Governance book by Weill and Ross
• Read an MISQE article on this topic by Peter Weill
• Read an MIT Sloan Management Review article by Weill and Ross
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We aren't sure how long this fine tradition goes back, but it was well-established by the early 1990s, when there was even a ream of MIT CISR letterhead with the heading "Center for International Sweets Research." When the MIT CISR team travels, they bring back sweets—especially chocolate—to share at the office. Turkish delight, Brazilian brigadeiros, French macarons, Hawaiian macadamia nuts, Spanish nougat, Italian truffles, rice candies from Asia, and See's chocolates from San Francisco have all graced our snack board! Thank you to all of those who have shared goodies from across the globe.
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“What to Expect from Teleconferencing” by Bob Johansen and Christine Bullen was published in Harvard Business Review March-April 1984. This was one of the first articles written on the emerging technology of teleconferencing and explained the options available at that time as well as providing management guidelines for its effective use in organizations. The “rules of thumb” resulted from research that Bob and Christine carried out in a number of companies that were experimenting with it. Differentiating between “synchronous,” i.e., when all participants were present at the same time regardless of location and time zones, and “asynchronous,” i.e., when participants can check in when they wish, formed the basis of a 2x2 graphic that foreshadowed the technologies we use today.
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Leslie Owens joined MIT CISR as Executive Director and Senior Lecturer in 2015, after Jeanne Ross stepped aside as Director. Leslie brought a fresh outside view to MIT CISR and a keen editorial eye to the research. She encouraged the team to try new technologies and ways of working. Leslie has remained active with MIT CISR after leaving in 2021, coauthoring Data is Everbody’s Business with Barb Wixom and Cynthia (Dr. Boo) Beath in 2023.
See more about Data is Everybody's Business.
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IT innovation is necessary for enterprise success, but it must be measured to ensure value and so MIT CISR's IT innovation research began with work focused on the IT portfolio. In their 1998 book Leveraging the New Infrastructure: How Market Leaders Capitalize on Information Technology, Peter Weill and Marianne Broadbent highlighted the importance of tracking investments in the IT portfolio including those for strategic (i.e., innovation) purposes. (The other three asset classes noted in the book were infrastructure, transactional, and informational.) Peter and his co-authors continued this stream of research through 2016, showing that becoming a more digital enterprise created a need for more infrastructure but that those infrastructure investments were correlated with more revenues from innovations.
Nils Fonstad's research in this area focused on the innovation portfolio, identifying four different types of innovation efforts enterprises need to engage in for long-term competitiveness: employee experience, customer facing, business operations, and new business models. He found that the allocation of the innovation portfolio mattered more to enterprise success than the total amount invested and that successful innovation involves learning across the enterprise. Peter and Stephanie Woerner have looked at how CIOs spend their time, especially around innovation (see The CIO as a Venture Capitalist). And more recently, Alan Thorogood examined the role of start-ups in helping large enterprises innovate.
• See more about the Leveraging the New Infrastructure book
• Read the 2016 Infrastructure briefing
• Review MIT CISR research on digital innovation
Read these digital innovation and IT portfolio-related briefings:
• Designing a Competitive Innovation Portfolio
• Becoming a Serial Innovator of Digital Offerings
• Three Imperatives to Learn From Your Digital Innovation Initiatives
• Top-Performing CIOs in the Digital Era
• The CIO as a Venture Capitalist
• Going Faster is Not Enough; Add Innovation to Outperform
• How Tech Leaders of Top-Performing Companies Spend Their Time
• xTechs Innovation: Achieving Speed While Managing Risks
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #Innovation
Written by John F. Rockart and David W. De Long, the book built on concepts from decision support systems to develop approaches for meeting the particular information needs and circumstances of CEOs and other top executives in an era when a computer terminal or PC was a very rare sight in executive offices.
Borrow the book online.
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Established in 2015, MIT CISR Data Research Advisory Board is composed of data and analytics leaders who engage in academic research and directly shape research insights. Drawn from CISR organizations, these leaders tirelessly help CISR researchers by participating in surveys, interviews and case studies; contributing to quarterly conversations about contemporary topics like Gen AI, cross-company data sharing and acceptable data use; attending virtual and in-person meetups, webinars and events; and embracing new ways to influence the field in positive ways. For example, in 2018, the Data Board co-authored an article about creating and implementing an effective data strategy, and most recently the Data Board contributed to the MIT CISR book Data is Everybody’s Business: Foundations of Data Monetization (MIT Press 2023) by writing the foreword, providing quotes, and serving as examples. To date, 340 different leaders at 167 distinct companies from around the world have served on the Data Board. The researchers, especially board founder and advisor Barb Wixom, are grateful for every one of these committed thought leaders.
• Learn more about the MIT CISR Data Research Advisory Board.
• Read the Data Board's data strategy article.
• Read more about Data is Everybody's Business.
#MITCISR50th #CISRDataBoard #LifeLongLearners #DataMonetization #MITCISR
This book (Oxford University Press, 1991) was the culmination of an ambitious research program launched by MIT Sloan in 1984 to investigate how advances in information technology would affect the way organizations would be able to survive and thrive in the 1990s and beyond. The program, led by Prof. Michael Scott Morton, was a close collaboration of researchers from multiple Sloan departments, including MIT CISR, and business executives from a diverse set of industries and the public sector.
• Borrow the book.
• Learn more about Michael Scott Morton.
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“It’s all about the people” has been a recurring phrase at MIT CISR since 2014, when Kristine Dery joined the team as a research scientist. A year later, Nick van der Meulen collaborated with Kristine to study digital workplace design during an academic visit to MIT, laying the groundwork for follow-up research. By the time Nick became an MIT CISR research scientist in 2017, their focus had evolved into a comprehensive study of employee experience—examining how organizations might best enable their employees to do their jobs today, as well as reimagine their jobs of tomorrow. Central to their findings are organizational capabilities that create (1) adaptive work environments that meet changing employee needs, and (2) collective work habits that allow employees to express their ideas, experiment, and be empowered to improve work. Their research showed that investments in these employee experience capabilities lead to greater customer satisfaction, increased innovation, and higher profitability. Today, MIT CISR’s commitment to employee-focused research is ongoing: Nick has recently expanded the research to examine capabilities for employee skill development, and he is currently examining the impact of (generative) AI on the employee experience.
• Hear from Nick about MIT CISR employee experience research.
• Learn more about this year's project on AI at Work.
• View the collection of MIT CISR's research on employee experience.
• Read a recent research briefing on Talent.
• Read about the Future Ready Workforce.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #EmployeeExperience
John Henderson and N. Venkatraman published the first version of their Strategic Alignment Model in 1989 in MIT CISR Working Paper 219. The model presented four domains—business strategy, information technology strategy, organizational infrastructure and processes, and information systems infrastructure and processes—which must align for an organization to achieve its goals. The model examined two characteristics of strategic management: strategic fit between the organization and the external environment and integration between the business and functional domains. The model has been cited over 7500 times in academic literature.
• Download MIT CISR Working Paper No. 219
• Learn more about John Henderson
• Learn more about Venkat Venkatraman
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MIT CISR researchers have collaborated with outside researchers and practioners since the inception of CISR and Dr. Cynthia Beath is probably our longest-running collaborator. She has been a valued MIT CISR research team member, publishing her first MIT CISR Working Paper, "Generating Value from Infrastructure Investments: An Examination of Client-server and Teams," in 1995 and her first Sloan Management Review article “Develop Long-Term Competitiveness through IT Assets” published in 1996. Initially, Cynthia worked with the MIT CISR team while serving as Full Professor at the University of Texas at Austin; since her faculty retirement in 2004, Cynthia has become a valued team member at MIT CISR and has made a dizzying number of contributions while serving as co-author, researcher, mentor, advisor, innovator, editor, champion and cheerleader. Cynthia, known by her colleagues as Dr. Boo, is a prodigious, provocative and prolific writer; to date, she has co-authored 100 MIT CISR articles, including “Beyond the Business Case,” “Why You—Yes You—Need Enterprise Architecture,” "Digitized ≠ Digital,” and “AI is Everybody’s Business.” She also co-authored two books with CISR researchers. Cynthia is an extraordinary interviewer, a thorough and thoughtful reviewer, a patient listener, and a much beloved colleague, who deserves much credit for MIT CISR’s impact on management practice.
• Download MIT CISR Working paper 269.
• Purchase the Sloan Management Review article.
• See more about Designed for Digital.
• See more about Data is Everybody's Business.
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Following the removal of the Application section of MISQ, practice-based research did not have a clear home until Allen Lee and a team of leading academics established the MIS Quarterly Executive journal in 2002. An official sister publication of MIS Quarterly, MISQE has been led by several editors-in-chief who are well known in our discipline as scholars dedicated to industry-relevant research—including Jack Rockart (the first editor-in-chief) and Jeanne Ross from MIT CISR and Carol Brown, Dorothy Leidner, Gabe Piccoli, all of whom have been visiting scholars at MIT CISR.
• Visit the MISQE home page.
• Read more about Jack Rockart.
• Read an editorial about the history of MISQE.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #MISQE
At the same time that digital technologies began to disrupt companies, MIT CISR research began to reach a wider audience as executives looked for guidance on how to leverage those same technologies. It was clear that in the new digital economy, many companies wouldn't succeed by merely tweaking their management practices—they would have to substantially change the way they did business. Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner began their business model research to learn about digital disruption and how companies were transforming themselves to address those disruptions. The research started with a series of focus groups with CIOs, asking them to describe their most important IT-enabled business transformations (resulting in a collection of 144 project descriptions). Two dimensions arose out of the analysis of the projects: 1) learning more about customers, and 2) changing business design. These two dimensions became the basis of the business model framework. That framework with its four business models, Supplier, Omni-channel, Modular Producer, and Ecosystem Driver, offered companies a systematic way to think about how they would make money in the digital economy and the changes they had to make to change their business model. Peter and Stephanie administered surveys, conducted interviews and did workshops with over 1000 organizations and in 2018 published What's Your Digital Business Model? Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise.
• Read more about this topic.
• See more about Peter and Stephanie's business models book.
• Read this research briefing Six Questions to Help You Build the Next-Generation Enterprise.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #DigitalBusinessModels
In 2000, Wanda Orlikowski (Principal Investigator), Peter Weill (Co-PI), Erik Brynjolfsson (Co-PI), JoAnne Yates (Co-PI), and Thomas Malone (Co-PI) won a five-year National Science Foundation grant to study how large companies were using the internet. MIT Sloan research centers CISR, IDE (Initiative on the Digital Economy), and CCI (Center for Collective Intelligence) coordinated the grant activities and Stephanie Woerner began her career at MIT as project manager for the overall grant as well as participating in the on-going research projects the grant supported. Research focused on three areas: organizational design and performance, organizing practices, and business models. The research projects used multiple theoretical and methodological approaches and generated over 25 publications as well as nine MIT CISR research briefings. Over its lifetime, the grant supported two post-docs, 19 doctoral students including Sinan Aral, Nils Fonstad, Kate Kellogg, and Melissa Mazmanian, seven master’s students, and 21 undergraduate students.
• See more about the grant award.
• Learn more about Wanda Orlikowski.
• Learn more about Peter Weill.
• Learn more about Erik Brynjolfsson.
• Learn more about JoAnne Yates.
• Learn more about Thomas Malone.
• Learn more about MIT CISR.
• Learn more about MIT IDE.
• Learn more about MIT CCI.
• Learn more about Stephanie Woerner.
• Learn more about Sinan Aral.
• Learn more about Nils Fonstad.
• Learn more about Kate Kellogg.
• Learn more about Melissa Mazmanian.
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Barb Wixom first came to MIT CISR in 2012 as a visiting scholar and a year later, joined the team as a principal research scientist to lead MIT CISR's data research stream. Over the past decade, Barb has surveyed thousands of executives, conducted more than thirty case studies, and collaborated with more than twenty researchers from universities around the globe to shed light on emergent data issues and opportunities. She clarified terms like “data monetization,” introduced terms like “data wrapping” and “data liquidity” to inspire contemporary thinking, and established a global network of highly-engaged data leaders who regularly inform her research. In the fall of 2023, Barb published Data is Everybody’s Business: Foundations of Data Monetization, co-authored by Cynthia Beath (aka Dr. Boo) and Leslie Owens. The book distills Barb's 30-plus years of research into a set of core frameworks and a common language that can help every organization make the most of their data.
• Learn more about Barb Wixom.
• Learn more about Dr. Boo.
• Learn more about Leslie Owens.
• Review MIT CISR data research.
• Read more about Data is Everybody's Business.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #datamonetization #datawrapping #dataliquidity
Just days before the 2015 European International Executive Forum in Warsaw, Poland, the MIT CISR event team was informed that a high profile political visitor would be in the venue during the event and Orange Polska (the event host) required the names, national identity numbers, dates of birth, and fathers' names for all event attendees. In just two days, this information was collected and provided just under the deadline. Day 1 of the event was uneventful, but Day 2 started with a first: a security check including bag searches and bomb sniffing dogs. Thankfully, both the MIT CISR event and the high profile visit went off without a hitch, a bang, or a bite.
Review recent MIT CISR Past Events including links to event-related content.
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Jeanne Ross spent 30 years studying Enterprise Architecture (EA), the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure. Drawing from over 50 case studies, Jeanne originated the 4-stage EA Maturity Model, describing the stages of EA that companies went through typically starting in business silos, moving to standardized technology, to an optimized core, and eventually business modularity. As they moved through the stages, companies got more and more strategic value from their technology. Jeanne, with co-authors Peter Weill and David Robertson, wrote Enterprise Architecture as Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution in 2006 and her 2004 MIT CISR research briefing, "Maturity Matters: How Firms Generate Value from Enterprise Architecture," remains one of the most downloaded research briefings available on the MIT CISR website. Jeanne continued to study EA throughout her career at MIT CISR, expanding and articulating the framework as digital technologies like social, mobile, analytics, cloud, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence were adopted and used by companies. Eventually she added a fifth stage, participating in a digital ecosystem, to the EA Maturity Stages. Jeanne's EA work culminated with the book Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success, published in 2021 with co-authors Cynthia Beath and Martin Mocker. In that book, the authors described the five key building blocks of the modern company's digital architecture.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #EnterpriseArchitecture
Decision Support Systems research demonstrated how information technology could be a useful tool for non-technical executives and laid the path for Executive Support Systems for higher-level executives. Prior to the introduction of Decision Support Systems, IT was seen by managers only as an accounting or operational tool. This research led to the book authored by Peter G.W. Keen and Michael S. Scott Morton in 1978, Decision Support Systems: An Organizational Perspective.
• Read the MIT CISR Working Paper No. 54.
• Learn more about Peter Keen.
• Learn more about Michael Scott Morton.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #DecisionSupportSystems
IT risk was understudied when George Westerman, a research scientist at MIT CISR from 2002 to 2011, began research on the dimensions of IT risk and how to communicate about it. In his book, IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage, written with Richard Hunter, George argued that incorporating IT risk into management conversations was a way to align IT and business objectives. During his time at MIT CISR, George also studied IT innovation and communicating the business value of IT. The latter topic was the subject of his book, also written with Richard Hunter, The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.
• Read more about The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.
• Read more about IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage.
• View a list of MIT CISR publications written by George Westerman.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #ITRisk
Many attendees of MIT CISR on-campus events over the past eight years undoubtedly cherish memories of campus tours led by the charming Nils Fonstad, former research scientist and current academic research fellow at MIT CISR. Nils, who spent his formative years on the MIT campus (his father is currently an MIT professor emeritus), has enthusiastically shared his favorite spots and captivating stories with many groups of MIT CISR event participants. Nils's infectious good nature has often inspired other campus wanderers to join the tour!
Learn more about Nils Fonstad.
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Thinkers50 honored Jeanne Ross as a finalist in 2019 for the Digital Thinking award for her research about how companies can retool for digital success. And in 2023, Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian were finalists for the Thinkers50 Strategy award for their work on the different ways businesses undertake transformation and the types of organizational disruption that are necessary for change.
• Learn more about Jeanne Ross.
• Learn more about Peter Weill.
• Learn more about Stephanie Woerner.
• Learn more about Ina Sebastian.
Additional information on Thinkers50.
View the Thinkers50 2023 Strategy Award Shortlist.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #Thinkers50
MIT CISR’s early attempts at globalization—with joint goals of global research supported by a global community of member organizations—began in 2008. The MIT CISR team produced the first of many subsequent international executive forums in April that year, co-hosted by IESE in Barcelona, Spain. In Sept. 2009, the “road show” moved to Sao Paolo, Brazil followed by forums in Copenhagen, Denmark and Sydney, Australia in the fall of 2010. MIT CISR currently holds international executive forums in Europe and Australia each year to maintain personal contact with members based in those regions, most recently in Sydney, Australia and Paris, France in March 2024. Our current global consortium includes organizations from Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and North, South, and Central America.
Review the list of current MIT CISR member organizations.
See a list of our past MIT CISR events.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR
Jack Rockart and Christine Bullen used the concept of Critical Success Factors to design a method for talking with CEO-level executives about defining their information needs. At the time (1979) CEOs were receiving too much operational-level data, when what they needed was strategic managerial-level information. The CSF interview allowed CEOs to communicate their needs to their IT managers in a clear, never-before understood way.
#MITCISR50th #MITCISR #research #CSFs #criticalsuccessfactors
When Summer Session was held in the Green Building in the middle of the MIT campus, MIT CISR took advantage of the design of the building—featuring a pedestrian “underpass”—to set up refreshments for a pleasant outdoor break. It was quickly discovered that students passing by were confident that the refreshments were for them and “guards” were required to keep everything from disappearing. This was a very challenging assignment, as MIT students were (and still are!) wily and fast.
Additional info on the Green Building.
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The Association of Information Systems (AIS) is the professional association for individuals and organizations who lead the research, teaching, practice, and study of information systems worldwide. It hosts conferences, supports journals, and and presents awards each year.
Over the years, AIS has honored MIT CISR researchers with several awards.
In 2003, Jack Rockart received a LEO Award. All recipients of the LEO Award, which was established in 1999, are outstanding scholars who have made a global impact on the field of information systems.
In 2017, Jeanne Ross received an AIS Fellow Award recognizing her research on enterprise architecture and her leadership of the 2015 annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). The AIS Fellow Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the information systems discipline in terms of research, teaching, and service.
The AIS Outreach Practice Publication Award was created to recognize members who successfully transfer research to practitioner audiences in practice-based publications. In 2017, Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson received an AIS Outreach Practice Publication Award for their book Enterprise Architecture and Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution. In 2023, Barb Wixom received the same award for her book Data Is Everybody’s Business: The Fundamentals of Data Monetization, which she co-authored with Cynthia Beath and Leslie Owens.
In 2010, Peter Reynolds, an MIT CISR research scientist at the time, was awarded the ACM SIGMIS Doctoral Dissertation Award for outstanding MIS dissertation for his dissertation entitled, “The Alignment of Business and IT Strategy in Multi-Business Organizations.”
#MITCISR50th #research #AIS
Jeanne Ross began her almost 28-year MIT CISR career in 1993. At the beginning of her tenure she worked closely with Jack Rockart, first as a research scientist and then as a principal research scientist. Jeanne served as director of MIT CISR from 2008–2015; she retired from MIT CISR in 2020. Jeanne is best known for her research on enterprise architecture and on how companies are designing themselves to succeed in the digital economy.
Watch this selection of videos revisiting Jeanne’s years with MIT CISR:
#MITCISR50th #enterprisearchitecture #entarch #EA #operatingmodels #Designed4Digital #D4D #digitization
MIT CISR’s first two research briefings were “Atomic e-Business Models” by Peter Weill and Michael Vitale and “When IT Outsourcing Works” by Natalia Levina and Jeanne Ross. Initially, MIT CISR published groupings of several briefings three times per year; in 2009, it switched to publishing individual research briefings monthly. Today, the center also publishes each briefing in an audio version, along with a companion one-page Talking Points summary publication prepared for MIT CISR members.
Review a list of MIT CISR’s research briefings.
#MITCISR50th #research
Peter Weill spent a year at MIT CISR as a visiting scholar in 1993. Following Jack Rockart’s retirement in 2000, MIT hired Peter as director of MIT CISR and senior research scientist. Under Peter’s leadership, both the center’s research and its membership base expanded across the globe. After decades of distinguished work at MIT, today Peter serves as Chairman of MIT CISR.
Read about Peter’s accomplishments in his MIT Sloan bio.
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MIT CISR faculty members were seeking a way to disseminate information about the excellent research being carried out under the auspices of MIT CISR. They decided to hold a conference where the researchers themselves would spotlight their research, and to do this in the summer when the teaching schedule was light. Slots to attend the conference were automatically assigned to MIT CISR sponsor organizations, while other prospective attendees went through an application process. The first MIT CISR Summer Session was in 1976. The response was huge, and MIT CISR Summer Session became a yearly tradition through 2023.
#MITCISR50th #research
John F. "Jack" Rockart was appointed the Director of MIT CISR in 1976, when the first director, Michael Scott Morton, became an associate dean at the Sloan School. Jack led CISR until 2000 and remained involved in the work of the Center until his death in 2014. Jack had an amazing gift for bridging academic research and real-world problems, and for mentoring junior faculty and students. During his tenure, MIT CISR’s reputation and impact grew across academia and the business world.
Learn more about Jack Rockart on Wikipedia.
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The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR) was established in 1974—50 years ago! It was founded by faculty in the MIT Sloan School’s Management Information Systems group who saw a need for objective, applied research on “significant managerial problems in the utilization of computer-based information systems” and an opportunity to create a consortium of private and public sector sponsors interested in participating in such research. Professor Michael Scott Morton (pictured adjacent, with MIT Sloan bio here) was the first director of MIT CISR.
Read the center's original Statement of Purpose and Structure.
#MITCISR50th #computer #informationsystems #research